


Alight

by false_alexis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Constipation, Everyone Needs A Hug, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss, M/M, MCU canon only no 616 here, Marvel Universe Big Bang 2014, Past unrequited love, The Winter Soldier blows shit up, alcohol (referenced), minor stalking/intimidation, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/false_alexis/pseuds/false_alexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s words, the mark that informs him of his soulmatch, are embarrassingly public, and since Riley’s gone it’s only a painful reminder of what he’s lost. When he meets Steve they're both distracted, and there's no chance to understand what is happening between them. Sam deals by not dealing, turning his life upside down every few years, and spending far too much time on the phone. However, when you can't run any more, you're forced to face what your priorities really are...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Alight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2501000) by [Holdt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holdt/pseuds/Holdt). 



> Infinite appreciation to Holdt, whose incredible vidding and manip'ing blew me away. Wow. [Go watch the vid!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2501000) (There's also a super-nifty cover. Seriously, there's so much good, go check it out!) 
> 
> Much thanks to beta C.M., who pulled through for me in a pinch. As ever, I have no self-control and continue to fidget constantly with the fic after my beta has already signed off, so if you catch anything wrong (or just have concrit) you're always welcome to say so.
> 
> This fic is very much Amy's fault, even though she doesn't know it. Based on [this tumblr prompt and the added tags.](http://jenny-sparks.tumblr.com/post/94718562257/sneakyhufflepuff-beccabarnes-has-anyone-done)

The first thing Riley ever says to him is "Hey man, move it." Which isn't exactly one for the books, and Sam's not treasuring it in his heart forever. But still. It's the first thing Riley says _to him_. And then Riley had shoved him, moving him out of the way so he could get to his gear, and that's fine. First conversation and first contact. Sam doesn't obsess but he does remember.

"On your left, huh?" Is the _second_ thing Riley says to him. It's a full day later, and they're getting dressed and there's that split second of 'wait, really?' that he always, always has.

He says something inane. He’s tired, worn down from weeks of too much thinking and too much moving. People read it out all the time, anyways.

Riley (the dude's been yelled at for three days straight by pretty much everyone around, damn right Sam knows his name) doesn't seem to mind Sam's distracted ass-hattery. "So, is that a tat, or is it for real?"

On occasion Sam lies, tells people that it's just a tattoo, not a mark. "It's real," he says. He's too cranky to lie, and besides, he's gonna be taking off his shirt around these fuckers an awful lot; eventually they’ll notice he doesn’t have any other words.

Riley just shrugs it off. Most people, they get a more discreet text on their thigh or along the hip or somewhere where you're not usually supposed to look on a stranger. Half the time you can’t even tell if a person is marked or not. But Sam? No, Sam got his smack on his shoulder-

_On_

_Your_

_Left_

in picture-perfect cursive that would have made Miss Kelly, Sam’s fourth grade teacher assigned to impress the importance of handwriting on impressionable minds, weep with joy. So there's no room there for a heart with a banner and his Mama's name, god rest her soul, or for his unit and motto, or any of that. Nope. He's just got 'on your left' and it seems like every fool who walks by has to read it to him.

So when Sam meets Riley, he isn’t entirely impressed.

He’s too busy being unhappy to feel much of anything else. He’s angry all the time about shit that no one can fix. He’s angry at the world and he’s angry at his friends and mostly he’s angry at his past self for being so fucking nice, because life sucks anyways. Mostly he’s angry that it’s been a year and he’s still sad that he can’t call his Mama and ask her questions he never brought up, like ‘Why is my mark out in public like that?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’

He can’t, though, so Sam just ends up talking to Riley, which means arguing half the time, and then they're working together which is maybe a third working against each other and then they're flying together and that's when it clicks. All of a sudden, they're in sync, they've got it.

Sam looks over in the air and he knows where Riley will be. Sam's good- Sam's great, even, he didn't get here trading on a pretty face- and Riley sure as hell knows what's up but together they're golden. He’s never been so locked-in with another person. He may not always like Riley’s choices, but he knows what they’ll be before Riley’s even made up his mind. He can’t imagine his life without Riley in it.

It takes months before he sees Riley's words, always hidden just under the elastic on his boxers. When he does see, he's confused. "Hey man nice shot" peeks out in blue-black, sharply crisp against his smooth cream skin, in an old-school typewriter-style font.

Sam can't remember. Did he say that? Did he give Riley some casual compliment that he didn't even notice, somewhere in their first few days? They'd been shooting, sure, so maybe he did. Or maybe not. Maybe it's actually a reference to that fucking song Sam’s freshman roommate used to destroy on the guitar, and Sam can’t figure out how that’s relevant.

Maybe the words are printed because it's from an email, or a letter? Or maybe it's just because Miss Kelly never did succeed in teaching Sam how to write anything but the worst block letters, and now he texts instead of leaving notes.

Sam analyzes this a lot. They leave the States, and experiment gone live, and he stews about it the whole way. But then they’re there, trying to save lives and stay alive, and doesn’t have energy or the inclination to worry about it any more. He’s too busy learning to live in the present.

“I wish I could ask her,” he tells Riley. It seems so damn important to share, now, because if he doesn’t tell Riley then no one else might ever hear about her. “I miss her all the goddamn time. Fuck, I miss her yelling at me about for and washing my mouth out with soap.”

“She did that?” Riley is caught between amusement and horror. Sam talks about the one and only time he got in that kind of trouble, when he shouted words he didn’t understand at his grandmother. He talks about the good times, and how he wishes he still talked to his sister so they could have been there for each other after Mama’s death. Sam talks until his throat is dry and hoarse. Riley just pours him more gin and lets him wet his lips and continue until he’s done. It’s only one of many night like that, safe for now and trying to live as best they can. They spend a lot of time thinking over their past; the future they let turn into a bit of a daydream, because if Sam didn’t have a plan going in, he sure hasn’t made one now.

"I'm not doing it again unless you are," he tells Riley flatly. The tour hasn't been short, or easy- they don't train up pararescue without expecting to get their money's worth- but he'll stick around as long as Riley will.

Riley shrugs, and then nods. They don’t talk about his reasons for deciding to stay another tour. Sam knows that's no good. He was going to be a social worker, he knows that facing your own motives is important, and more so when your life is on the line. But right here, right now, the most important thing in Sam’s world is Riley.

They both go out there again, and only Sam comes back.

 

* * *

 

Sam goes back to school because he doesn't have anything else to be doing. He can't go home; his mother's house sold while he was still in training. He doesn't want to go back just hear bullshit platitudes from people he grew up with, and he doesn't want to end up in some tiny backwards town, and he doesn’t want to move to a random city for no good reason. So: Back to school for social work, just like he never even left. At least it makes it sound like he has a plan.

He lands in the D.C. metro area, thanks to the GI bill and some sympathetic officers who want to see him make it in the real world. He's still a pretty good student; maybe rusty, but that's okay. He’s okay.

There's a girl in his program, cute, with her hair cropped real short but fancy earrings like she doesn't want anyone to forget how feminine she is. She talks to him sometimes, after class, and they're not really friends, but on the first day of his second semester she asks him out for coffee.

"I mean, just casual and all, but, like... I'm trying to ask you out," she blurts, and he grins not because he thinks it's funny (he doesn't think much is funny) but because he wants her to feel okay.

He turns her down gently. It’s a good day to be outside, cheerfully sunny, and he walks her to her next class because he’s going that direction anyways. She’s smiling, but he drops his own smile as soon as he turns away.

The weather goes from hot and sticky to biting cold far too fast, which at least gives Sam an excuse for long sleeves. He can’t sleep at night, and he feels fuzzy and disoriented during the day. Sam’s grown used to being alone. He notices it when there’s that feeling as he gets back to his room, the cold because no one was around to turn on the heat.

His thoughts are blessedly interrupted by a phone call from a number that makes his breath catch. It’s Riley's girl, the one he was so crazy about when they were still in training, Valerie. Riley had stopped talking about buying a ring after the first year, but she hadn't up and left him until he'd announced that he was going back again. At the time Sam had acted angry and shocked on Riley's behalf, and he _was_ offended- who the hell couldn't wait for _Riley_?

At first it’s hard to hear her voice, but then it’s good, because at least she understands.

"He was something else," she says, and Sam realizes it'll be one year in a few weeks.

"Yeah. He was everything." He reaches across himself to touch his words.

They don't have much to say, and even as Sam knows she’s thinking that this was a mistake, he's making plans to be in touch again, just to make sure she’s doing okay. He'd resented her so much, always wondering if without her his relationship with Riley would have had that final dimension. (He was twenty-two and scared and horny and a romantic at heart.) That old jealousy just seems petty and stupid to him now. Why did he bother? Did he want fewer people in the world to love Riley? Riley deserved everyone and everything.

He stops that girl, the one from the beginning of the semester, right before their next class together, and asks her out for coffee after. It’s the first time he talks about Riley to a stranger since his terminal leave. The girl's name is Asha, and she's funny and resilient and by the time her sweet-as-sin coffee is gone she's recognized what Sam already knew: that he needs a friend he can lean on a little, not a woman in his life.

Sam has fun, though. It's good, because he’s forgotten how much he liked saying Riley’s name. In turn, she never asks why he left the Air Force. She does make a comment about his shoulder, like she thinks he was injured and that’s why he’s out. Sam starts trying to rub his arm less often.

She’s driven, is the thing, and somehow that means she drags him through the application process for grad programs. He's humoring her at first, but she comes to meet him after a rough day in field practicum, and takes him to a library to finish some theoretical case studies for an assignment. It turns into a conversation about trust and fear, about helping people, about doing what’s needed. They leave late that night, and he remembers, for the first time since his mother died, what it was he wanted to do with his life and why.

After that it’s easier to care about the future, about school and work. Asha gets into a program in Pennsylvania. Sam helps her load up the car and then kisses her on the cheek and promises to text a lot. "I'll miss you," he tells her, and means it. She punches him gently on the arm before climbing into the car and driving away. He never did clarify her misconception.

Which leaves him back where he started, except not- he's got no Riley, true, but he's still got himself, maybe more than he has in a long time. School and work- his new field practicum, at least- are rewarding and reassuring.

It isn't just seeing the pain of others makes him see his own in perspective. Being there for other people, supporting them, letting them know they aren’t the only ones, makes his own soul hurt less. He wonders if this is some strange sort of schadenfreude. In the end he figures it’s another way of processing, and refuses to feel guilty.

His classes now include subjects like 'Bond Severance and the Grieving Process' which is awkward as hell. They cover a lot of ground: how bonds are formed, how they're identified, what it means to be bonded. He and Riley aren't that unusual for not being into each other like _that_ , though common knowledge may say they should have been. According to the experts, it’s supposedly perfectly normal not to fuck the other half of your soulmatch. Okay, then. 

Sam keeps comparing his situation to everything else he’s hearing and seeing and reading. With Riley, they’d never really said it to each other. There had good reason for not talking about it: the army was happy to turn a blind eye to soulmatches in a unit as long as the unit functioned, but once they were listed in the paperwork military regulations would have required separation. So they’d never said the word ‘bond’ out loud, and maybe Riley had been sure and maybe he hadn’t.

The thing is while Sam’s discharge papers involved a lot of euphemisms for 'severed bond, extensive emotional trauma, not fit for service' he didn't have anything solid he could hold onto, not even memories of touching Riley’s mark for the hell of it, or of Riley’s fingertips tracing his letters. He’s just got these words. Now that Riley’s gone, he’ll get to watch them fade slowly until in a decade only the faintest ghost of a mark will be left. They were undeclared, unacknowledged, and now it’s all kind of empty.

 

* * *

 

“Hello?” Sam doesn’t recognize the number, but he answers anyways, figuring it’s someone informing him that there’s been yet another complication with his transcript and they’re very sorry, but if he wants to start the graduate program come spring he’ll need to find and submit his kindergarten report card. It’s been a stressful semester.

“Hi, Sam? It’s me.”

Sam stops in the middle of the busy hallway. He hasn’t heard his sister’s voice in over a year, since right after he was discharged on ‘emotional health’ grounds. They’d been shaky, then, with her just getting her life together and his just having fallen apart.

It takes him a few minutes to catch up, but she sounds well. Steady, or steadier than he remembers, at least. They make small talk; he asks after her new husband and the baby. “He’s getting big,” she says, proud.

“Yeah?”

“He’s a good kid, Sam.” She hesitates, and Sam braces himself. Is this another Sarah disaster in the making? “ You should meet him, if you want to.”

It’s unexpected. He says yes, waves off the apology for missing Thanksgiving, and tries to hear her out. She invites him for a family Christmas. “Just think about it,” she says, when he doesn’t respond. “If you get done with classes and you want a place to be, come visit us. We’ll save you the couch,” she promises, and he laughs, remembering the times when she’d come to him after a bad breakup and crash on his couch.

The little things like that are what let Sam know that yeah, he’s adjusting just fine. He's good at healthy coping mechanisms, and if the first year out of the Air Force was hard and isolating, then the next year is going to be a little better. Besides, he's good at his work, in between his classes and the daily obligations of civilian life, and that makes him feel like he can gets the rest of his shit together. People want to trust him, and he doesn't want to do anything to break that trust, so he's good.

Christmas with Sarah doesn’t happen that year, but Sam indulges himself and rents a car to drive for four hours to his mothers’ grave. He sits for a long while, in the cold with the damp, dead grass giving way beneath him. Three years ago he was with Riley at his parents’ house, trying to intervene every time Riley and Valerie started another spat. It had been awkward, but it has still been the nicest holiday he'd had since Mama died. He thinks all the way back home. He thinks about all the ways his life has changed over the last few years. He thinks about the way he keeps so busy, between school and work, and how he rides himself so hard, that he hardly ever has nightmares. He thinks about the adjustments he hadn't let himself notice that first year without Riley, because hey, maybe with some distance he can see that it's more than just his wingman's death that makes this so fucking hard.

If returning to undergrad was just a cleverly disguised path of least resistance, then grad school is something he does for himself. He works hard. He meets people and turns them into friends just as easily as he always has.

He starts returning Sarah’s calls, and they get along better now than they have since they were children, before she started running wild and avoiding her baby brother. She asks for photos, but everything he has, he realizes, is from his time in the Air Force. “What about graduation?” she asks.

“There’s no ceremony in the winter,” he tells her.

She hesitates, and Sam just _knows_ what’s coming. “Mom would be so proud. I _am_ proud. And I bet… I bet Riley would be proud of you, too. You should do this.” She promises to come and take her own photos.

He wavers, but it’s been too long since someone said they were proud of him. Spring turns to summer and Sarah comes to visit for the first time since he was discharged. She brings Jody, who is so much bigger than the few baby pictures Sam has seen. Her husband can’t make the trip, but she Skypes with him in the evening. “It’s nice to have space,” she admits to Sam. “I love him so much, and he’s the other half of me, but I sometimes need to remember that I’m my own person, too.”

She’s settled down a lot. Sam wonders out loud how much of that was Jody coming along, and how much of that was about meeting her soulmatch. Sarah laughs, and shakes her head. “Oh, probably a little of both. I started trying when I knew I was gonna keep Jody, but things didn’t come together really until Meke was around.”

“You really think he changed you that much?”

“Hell no!” She glances guiltily at the bedroom where Jody is napping. “Hell no,” she reiterates, more quietly. “I changed me. He just gave me a reason, and a way.”

They have an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, to enjoy each other’s company and relearn how to be siblings before the world goes to hell. When anyone asks, Sam will always remember sitting on the couch, next to his sister who he hadn’t seen in years, while his nephew naps after a hard day playing tourist. He’ll remember the action alert that interrupts their terrible afternoon TV. They sit close together and try to laugh incredulously at the ridiculous shit the TV is claiming- gods and monsters? Superheroes in Germany? It's ridiculous, and CNN treats it as some kind of hoax, right up until the next morning when New York is burning and those are real live aliens, there, and thank god there are real live heroes among them.

The cell network is a mess. He vaguely remembers the last time the networks has been so bad, and his Mama was in tears because she kept not getting through to their cousins in the Bronx. It’s a little bit like that. Sam calls Asha again and again, tries a couple of guys he’d known overseas who’d moved to New York, but gets nothing but busy signals and error messages. Social media is overloaded and unreliable.

Everything everywhere is canceled. The travel restrictions are lifted that evening, so Sarah takes her toddler and heads home to her bonded. Sam hugs them and hugs them and doesn't let them get in the car until the last possible minute, Sarah laughing at him and insisting they really do need to get going. He hears from Asha, late, and they quietly talk until his battery finally dies. She drives down to stay on his couch for a few days, and Sam desperately appreciates not being alone.

Sam goes in to his field practicum in the morning, even though he’s not scheduled. It’s a tough day, so many traumatized, terrified people everywhere, and the only ones who can reassure them don’t know anything more themselves.

The end result is a new awareness in the world that aliens are real and heroes are necessary, and also Sam has a whole bathroom full of women's toiletries.

The weird thing is how everything feels different but daily life doesn’t change. Sam starts having nightmares about Riley again. He gets a placement at a VA, and some of the vets are a little angrier, and some are relieved, and everyone is weirdly proud of Captain America for coming home. Sam has his own flash of jealousy, in that moment when he realizes that it's him, the one and only Cap, who went down serving his country. He takes it out, looks at it, and lets the feeling go. There is no trade he can make for Riley, and there's no claim that the world is a just place. He can only hope that every one of those missing do come home someday. Cap is just another lost soul.

He hopes Cap's got a shoulder to lean on, too.

 

* * *

 

In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Sam gets calls and text from people he hasn't seen since starting graduate school, former classmates or fellow volunteers, asking if he wants to get a drink and catch up. He opens his Facebook page for the first time in about five years. He gets friendly with some other vets. He starts looking up what happened to his unit.

Sam takes up running again. It makes him feel good, makes him feel safe, and that's not just an endorphin high. There's something about being out in the sticky D.C. weather, before the day gets so hot he wants to suffocate, that makes him feel the freedom he hasn't felt since his wings. (And if he can still run, then he can still get away.) It gives him an outlet and a sense of control.

But it hits him one morning, when his shirt is sticking to his skin and the pavement is harsh beneath his feet- he hasn't been in the air since he got back. He hasn't thought about flying since he got back.

It's like this whole other world just opens up beneath him, and he half stumbles, too distracted. He's spent so much time and feeling on Riley, isolating himself and channeling all his emotions into that loss, that he hasn't let himself think about the other things.

He misses flying. He also misses being so very not-alone; not just having his Riley but having his entire world be about the men by his side, the intensity of their camaraderie that’s so absent from his current life. He misses, in a sudden and frightening way, that sense of doing good in the moment and not just over time. He misses saving lives. It is what it is, though: his wings are beyond his reach, and civilian life will always differ from military.

Adorable, take-no-shit Martha from reception brings him a bagel and a suggestion that he maybe head out early that day. He smiles at her, says thanks and watches as she flushes.

There’s this one night, Sam gets a text from a kid he barely knows and he goes out because hey, what’s the point of being young and free and alive six months after an actual alien invasion? And Sam looks across the table at these people, at Ben who helped him get his apartment and Tonya from his Group Methods class and Ahmet and Ben’s latest fling who might or might not even be leaving with him, and he has a moment. The music is too loud, as if to cover for the lack of a crowd, and his friends are drinking too much too fast. Still. It’s that moment that Sam realizes he’s made a life for himself again.

He’s been hurt, and he’s been part of a changing world, and he’s changed his own world a few times over. And if there’s no one here he couldn’t handle saying goodbye to, that’s okay. The point is they are here, and he’s here, and he might be so lonely it hurts sometimes but other times he’s got enough.

Sam doesn't date, but he goes home with Ahmet- tall, plain but with gorgeous eyes and a strong, lean body- that night. He only has to ask him once not to touch his mark, and Ahmet doesn’t ask about it. Sam doesn’t over-examine his own sexuality: he’s always found it easier to live in the moment. Knowing that he’s got a soulmatch has always been enough for Sam, he figures he doesn’t quite get the same rules for desire that unmarked people do. Besides, he’s found a balance and an attitude that works for him as long as he doesn’t dwell on it too long. He meets the occasional person, usually female, and doesn’t try to make it more than it is. It’s fine. Sex is fine.

So Sam has his running, and his friends, and his sister, and his old unit, and his work, and his occasionally obsessive need track the remainder of his air-rescue program. He's got what he needs to be him, to move forward, to heal. He's got himself, again.

And that's when he meets fucking Captain America.

 

* * *

 

Later on, he'll deny it, but at the time? He's kind of cranky about the whole thing.

Because he hears those words so damn often, and he's just ready to be done with it already. "Uh-huh. On my left. Got it." Because this asshole thinks he's being fucking clever, right? Running by on his left and reading as he goes? Cute.

Except then when this guy has lapped him for the third time and he's fucking pissed, because no one can do that, that's inhuman, and does the man have to be- and that's when he really takes a look at the guy as he goes (swiftly) by.

So Sam's legitimately distracted. Once he's done being grouchy he's distracted because holy shit, he may be getting his ass handed to him but he's getting his ass handed to him by _Captain America_. That's definitely not something you see everyday.something to write home about. 

He's not proud; when you get beat by Captain America you sit the hell down and catch your breath. Except after about two minutes of talking he doesn’t see a superhero in front of him, he just sees some kid who made it home from the war.

(Steve Rogers has been described in the media from every possible angle, and even though Sam knows he's just some guy who fights monsters and aliens, he still has a hard time believing that. Of course, he also didn't peg Rogers as the sort of guy to be a dick just because he's bored, so. Maybe he has a few things to reconsider.)

The point is while he's sitting there he recognizes exactly the same sort of person who comes through the VA every day, except this guy is still out there, in a sense, still fighting. There's a lot of vets Sam's known who would do that if they could, he's sure. So he invites him by, just because the man seems decent and lonely in that way that guys who just got back and aren't quite dealing with it are lonely.

He reaches out just for the sake of connecting with a good guy. It makes his morning that much brighter. Which, hah, brighter, that's good, given that Captain America could apparent read black on brown, in motion, before the sun was even up.

And if he thinks Rogers looks like a damn model, well, the man's apparent failure to understand how shirt sizes work certainly contributes. And the hot girl- the extremely hot girl. And the car that's like sex on wheels. If Sam's thinking about how damn sexy the whole situation is that just means he still has a pulse.

When he gets to the office that morning, he finally realizes that he had been wearing long sleeves.

Rogers hadn't read a thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Captain America’s mark, or lack thereof, is not on public record. During the war soldiers’ marks were considered sensitive information as a matter of course, and asking afterwards would have been in very bad taste. Fiction sometimes casts Peggy Carter as his soulmatch, even though there's no supporting evidence at all and she went on to marry. There's barely any evidence the two were romantically involved. There are others, crackpots mostly, who are convinced Rogers and Barnes were a secret soulmatch, but they’re just conspiracy theorists. Probably.

(Sam may, just possibly, do a little intense Googling on the subject when he needs a break at work. It’s suddenly become fascinating.)

Sam remembers the look in Steve's eyes when he tried to shut the conversation down and forget what he'd lost. The thing is that while losing your match can feel like losing your entire world, Rogers _did_ lose his entire world. Literally. Everyone he knew is dead, and even the places have changed; it's every soldier homecoming nightmare made real.

So whether or not he has a mark for a lost love, he has cause for being so lost and alone.

Sam is surprised by how entirely unsurprised he is when Rogers turns up again. It’s delightful and inevitable. It feels like he’s just been waiting on the guy to show, an sort of inevitability. Rogers is every bit as attractive in street clothes as when he’s dressed for exercise, but more than that, he’s familiar. Sam recognizes him on a deep and primal level.

When Rogers reaches out Sam reaches right back. He tries to say what he can, because words aren't enough but they're the only thing he has. They're the only weapon that exists for this sort of fight, the kind of self-esteem and doubt and guilt.

Afterwards, he does his best to write it off as a nice, but odd, coincidence. He lets himself be reminded of Riley, then lets it go. (He’s gotten good at that.) He puts the whole thing out of his head until Rogers shows up at his door with an apology and the redhead, while announcing that he's a wanted man. It's quite a dramatic move. He also goes from ‘Rogers’ to 'Steve’- this isn't just military brotherhood, anymore, this is conspiracy.

In another time and place the presence of the smoking-hot chick from earlier might mean something, but right now Sam only wants to clean them up and calm them down. He carefully doesn’t stare at Steve in his undershirt, and he manages to avoid reading the words printed in careful dark letters across his collarbone.

He feeds them because he has to do something and 'listen and nod' won’t quite cut it. He brings out his history for them to peruse because he wants to be involved, he wants to help, in that immediate visceral way he hadn’t realized he's been missing. He smirks at Steve when he looks impressed because hey, the man didn't realize how awesome Sam is? That's his loss.

And he goes with them because Romanoff is obviously something else but Steve could use as many people as possible watching his back.

Then there's the getting past security. There's watching two utter bad-asses bluff, lie, and sneak their way past national defense meant to protect precious military resources. There's the fear in the back of Sam's throat. What if they don't make it out? No matter how good you are, risk is risk. What if they don't get the suit?

Another time and place, and Sam would have something to say when Steve and Romanoff come back with his wings. He settles for giving Steve a long, slow once-over, just to make it clear that he can _appreciate_ a man like that. Steve blushes, and glares.

"You're something else," Sam tells him.

"We've got a job to do," Steve counters, and Sam just grins. Damn right they've got a job to do. He’s feeling oddly alert, and far too invested. Steve grins back, and they share a moment of wildly inappropriate anticipation.

They go. They kidnap. They fight. They're attacked.

Sam has his duties laid out. They talked about getting separated; priorities are keep the wings, and if that fails, keep the wings away from the maniac cyborg assassin and what Hydra connections he has. There’s a rush of battle, and Sam’s priorities boil down to something simple once more.

 

* * *

 

He’s too far away to see the moment when Steve's world turns upside down. But he sees Steve freeze, and then stand up like he's out for a stroll, not engaging in close combat. Sam acts on instinct, coming up behind the scary man who _tore out his steering wheel_ , and doing what he can because he has to, absolutely has to, protect Steve.

Getting captured, being herded into the truck, all blurs together for Sam. One of the many, many things you learn early on is that it's a bad idea to give your captors additional information about you or your weakness, so Sam's trying and trying not to stare at Steve, who is practically babbling. Sam is also distracted by the woman slowly bleeding out next to him, and, oh yeah, he's also captive and being taken to his execution by the actual incarnation of power-hungry Nazis. It's possible he’s a little freaked out.

With all of that happening the new girl's definitely a surprise. The good kind of surprise, though, and though her escape plan is truly surreal Sam can’t object.

Steve goes along, surprisingly docile, but he continues turning the puzzle of the Winter Soldier over and over out loud. Sam watches Steve, when he can, and concludes that he’s only voicing his thoughts because he trusts everyone else to do what they need to- he trusts that at the moment, he’s redundant. Sam allows that that might be true, and refocuses his attention on helping Romanoff move without aggravating her injuries.

Modern field medicine is more about preserving people during transport than about healing on the spot, so handing Romanoff off to someone who can actually do something? That feels damn good. It also frees up Sam to refocus on trying to figure out this unbelievable man taking command of a rebellion against the leaders of the supposedly free world. This man who is fucking hurting, and more than he's ever wanted anything in his life Sam wants to be able to reach in and _fix_ it.

Sam wishes focus and clarity could be instilled from outside, wants to cut away the things that are pulling Steve in too many directions. This guy- this assassin- he's gonna get Steve killed. The idea would scare Sam, if he let himself feel much of anything right now.

It's a fucking gorgeous day for the end of the world as we know it. Sam's tempted to be pissed about that, but settles for gratitude instead. He gets to see Steve standing in the sunlight, looking as thoughtful and broken as he'd seemed the day they'd met, but with new drive and determination.

 _Is this what makes him happy?_ wonders Sam. _Is it having something to do the lets him be himself?_

As they talk Sam can feel Steve growing more grounded, more centered. Steve's joking again, because Steve is a wonderfully sarcastic sonofabitch. Sam thinks he hears a lot in that humor, in the offhand comments about uniforms. He thinks that maybe he's actually hearing Steve talk about his identity, about the man he believes himself to be. Maybe even the man he _wants_ to be.

Or maybe  he’s watching a man consume himself with concern for a friend who can’t be saved, with the shadow of a ghost of a hope. Hard to say. Sam just hopes he gets a chance to know that guy when this is said and done. And if not, well, at least he's had a few days, and he's going down swinging. He’s going down taking down a specter of an organization, one he knew of only as nightmare fodder and a side-note in his history textbooks. This group… Sam’s seen a lot of people who can’t handle openness, freedom, equality. He’s seen a lot of people in bad situations, he’s seen people do some pretty awful things, but this might be the first time he can unequivocally say he’s about to punch evil in the face. At least that part, if nothing else, seems simple.

Steve turns to him as they’re waiting for nice rescue lady Hill to finish up with the last of her orders for the base. It’ll be packed up and shut down, and whether it is ever reopened probably depends on how the next few hours go. “I saved him from Hydra once before, you know.”

“I know.” The afternoon Sam had- god, was it only last week?- surreptitiously checking Wikipedia and various Captain America history sites- plus a very interesting blog about Captain America ‘Then vs. Now’- that research seems to have paid off in unexpected ways.

Steve pauses, his shoulders coming up in a gesture of sheepish tension. “That time bringing down the base was a secondary objective. I went in to free prisoners.”

“To free him.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. They stand close, shoulders brushing, neither pointing out the obvious differences. Stopping Hydra is not just the right thing to do, it's the only thing Steve and probably Sam will be able to live with, because Steve's the sort of person who can only live with doing the right thing and also because if they fail Hydra will kill them all very dead.

Romanoff comes limping towards them, but as she moves she straightens. Her spine goes stiff and he can literally see the limp vanish from her movement. “Don’t you boys have too much fun without me, now,” she says, and gives a jaunty little wave as she passes by, old-lady suit the only limitation on her stride.

“See you on the other side,” Steve says with easy confidence. He  looks over and meets Sam’s eyes. “We’re gonna go stop Hydra. And then, I’m gonna go get him back again.” It’s a relentless kind of devotion, and Sam knows how that works.  Mama had always said that he loved people totally and without remorse. Sam liked that, a lot, and he still thinks about it sometimes. His sister said that he loved people like a threat.

Sam developed his ritual for a very different circumstance, but he falls back on it nonetheless. He concentrates, ensuring he knows exactly what the plan is, reviewing  what he knows and what he doesn’t know, and then- usually for the duration of transport, if they’ve had any decent prep time- he stops thinking about it. He concentrates on everything, anything else. He flies better when his mind’s free, and easy, and he needs to outdo himself today.

So all the way over to the Triskelion, these are the thoughts that are running through his head:

First, he knows that when Riley went down, that was the end. There are no second chances with soulmatches- you meet yours, and that’s it.

Second, that the way Steve met his eyes, and the smirk he uses instead of a smile, and the way Sam felt safer and more sure with Steve by his side before a battle with incomprehensible stakes… that means something. The words he caught sight of on Steve’s collarbone, when he was trying not to look, they mean something, to someone, and, well…

He really can’t bear to follow that line of thought, right now.

Third, that whatever this protectiveness, and compassion, and yes, this burning attraction to Steve mean, he needs to settle himself, because the only way out is through.

Then they’re on site, and living in the moment. Afterwards, when he’s exhausted and frightened, he clings to those thoughts gain. It’s what lets him fight back the panic, before he can inventory the team he went in with to see that everyone’s unharmed. Natasha’s injured again, of course. Apparently that woman can out-Spartan the Spartans, because she’s still up and engaged, though by all rights she should be passed out with pain and exhaustion. “I’ll lie down when we get Rogers back,” she says, and that’s how Sam learns that Steve is unaccounted for. He feels a strange dropping sensation, like his wings just gave out, and clamps down on the sudden nausea before it can overpower him.

 

* * *

 

Sam leads with his heart. He’s self-aware enough to recognize his own nature and adult enough not to take it as some sort of insult. Some people react with their heads: Thinking through every option, measuring the consequences. Sam’s not like that.

When Sam was in college the first time, he was impulsive and curious and just wanted to do some shit he hadn't done yet, right? He knocked out almost all of his requirements to graduate, and on a whim manages to land Philosophy in Literature to fill that last, lonely gen-ed.

He's one of like, nine guys in a class of forty. It's fun being the odd one out on that metric; it’s fun doing this reading list that the professor obviously thought about, and cares about. He likes that he really has to work at this, that the class makes him think differently.

That semester Sam ends up writing his final paper on Jane Austen and her philosophy of bond-marks. Which, if you had told him five years ago, he'd have laughed himself sick; it's not quite assigned by the professor but she does mention to him that Austen is not his strong suit and students should try to stretch their abilities.

So he sits down to write this paper and maybe he's got some gin around because the party last night ran hard and he's young enough to be a big fan of the hair of the dog. And Sam's sitting there, flipping through this book, and he finally gets it. The reader never does find out Darcy's mark, and that's okay because the point is that their marks are from the moment when each first sees the other as a person, real and whole and complex, not just those first impressions or pre-existing assumptions.

He's pretty proud of himself, and he takes the resultant tear-down of his essay in stride because at least he figured something out, right? When he turns the paper in he grabs the last of that gin goes and lectures the shy boy from across the hall who he maybe wants to be buddies with and maybe a little bit more than that, he can't say for sure. Sam goes on and on about the point of bond-marks being that you will connect as people. You _have_ to connect, on that fundamental level, or you wouldn't be bondmates, right?

The boy, Jake or John or Jack, smiles at him, shy and awkward in the halide light that glows above the front step of their dorm. He puts his lips to the bottle and takes a sip, then passes it right back. "It sounds amazing. Don't some people get it right away, though? Like, their mark’s the first words they hear or whatever?"

"Some people just, like, see you as a person right off the bat." Sam shrugs, and drinks.

"I bet that's you."

The boy looks deadly serious, and Sam's debating whether to kiss him now or convince him to come back inside, first. Some dudes are (reasonably) nervous about PDA.

"Maybe. I hope so." He tries so hard to be like that, to everyone, all the time. Mostly, he tries to be the person his Mama wants him to be.

The boy reaches out for the bottle again, and  his hand closes half-over Sam's as he takes it. "Every now and again I wish I had one, you know? A mark."

There's something sinking inside Sam's chest, something ugly. He drags out the normal bull about how some people do get one late in life, it isn't unheard of, and how the unmarked always claim to enjoy a freedom the marked will never have. All the while, though, he's reeling.

They say college is a time for self-discovery, and the thing Sam discovers about himself that night is that he is, apparently, waiting for The One. He wants to meet his other half, this is a priority for him, and he doesn't know what to do now. He’s been okay with a little something in the past, but never gone in already _knowing_ the person he’s with can’t be his match.

He sends the kid- John?- off to bed, practically dismissing him, but feels bad about it the next day. He's gonna ask him out first thing after the semester, because he's a good kid and Sam likes him and everyone deserves to be treated with respect and not as some reject, some lesser choice just because they’re unmarked. Sam’s a hypocrite if he’s willing to date marked people who don’t match him, but not the unmarked.

Sam makes up his mind on Christmas Eve, even texts the guy to say ‘Merry Christmas’ and ask how his break’s been.

Two weeks later when the semester starts he’s packing up his mother’s belongings and talking to the Air Force recruiter. He doesn’t see the kid again.

 

* * *

 

Sam puts on music to drown out his own thoughts. It’s the flip side of his pre-battle rituals: he’s trying to let it go. Gaye is soothing and inspiring, and the music pulls him away from the chaos and universal mistrust that permeated the scene after the helicarriers went down. There was hardly any authority on the ground at all; that was the goal and now that's become the problem. People are running scared, no one knows who to trust. Forget divers in the water, they could barely get the police organized.

When they found Steve he was dragging himself up the shore, water-logged and beat to hell. Sam’s exhaustion hit all at once, a great wave of something cracking open inside him. Going home sounds unappealing, though, and getting checked over for damage seems like a good idea… so why not end up at the same hospital as Steve.  It calms him to hang onto that same focus point, that same Steve, the got him into this mess in the first place.

When Steve wakes, Sam’s heart doesn’t thump on hearing Steve’s first words, and he doesn’t want to cry. He’s just a little shaken, is all. It’s exactly what he was hoping for, and what he was afraid of. This could change everything he knows about himself. It could change everything about Riley. The pull he’s been feeling, slow draw to be near Steve watch him and help his cause and protect his heart- it makes sense, terrible, beautiful sense.

Sam swallows hard, and forces his confusion and anger aside, just for the moment. This isn’t the time and certainly isn’t the place, no matter how vulnerable Steve looks in a hospital gown. Nevertheless, Steve is really hard to kill, by design and probably by sheer stubborn willpower, so if he’s here and still breathing Sam can finally relax.

He keeps the conversation light, not asking about what happened on the helicarrier or how Steve made it to the shore. "This is the album you wanted me to listen to?" Steve asks.

Sam grins at him. "Good music helps you heal, everyone knows that. I’m a medical professional, you should listen to me."

When it gets late the hospital wants to kick him out, but Sam babbles something something about ‘high-risk’ and ‘possible retaliation’- and not only is Sam allowed to stay by him through the night but Steve is discharged in the morning almost as soon as the nurses' shifts change.

They don’t discuss where they’re going. Sam drives home, and he’ll admit later, much later, that he’s so concerned about how they’re getting through this that he kind of forgets to ask Steve if this is good with him. Probably for the best; Steve seems like the type who would shoo Sam away just so he can test his limits trying to get back into the action. Someone- probably Hill or Romanoff- has arranged for a not-insignificant guard on the apartment, which is almost funny to Sam in his sleep-deprived state. You can't secure that place fully. Still, the gesture is well-intentioned, and it’s a lot better than nothing. Sam holds the door for him as Steve limps in, and they fall asleep sitting on opposite ends of the couch, curving just slightly towards each other.

Sam sneaks off while Steve’s still sleeping. He makes the necessary contacts- reassuring those who reached out with concern about Steve (and he’d like to be more surprised that he’s so easily found) and letting his own people know that he’s alright, including calming Sarah back down from her not-quite-frantic state. He feels oddly disconnected the whole time. He’s musing on the differences of civilian life while he makes dinner, and almost doesn’t hear quiet footfalls behind him.

"How you doin'?" Sam doesn't needs to turn around to ask, just like he doesn’t need to look and see the comforting sight of Steve looming in the doorway.

"I'm good." Steve sounds like he just might mean it. "It might be a few days before I'm back up to normal, but…"

"Aw, too, bad, I was gonna introduce you to the joys of luge." His voice is gentler than he means it to be. "Go set the table.”

"Putting the houseguests to work, I see how it goes around here." Steve starts opening drawers and cupboards, and Sam pulls out the silverware drawer with one hand while continuing to stir with the other. "Is this the Wilson way?"

"Only for the guests who show up unannounced, and then get me drawn into what is- you have to admit- pretty much treason, knocked out of the sky, chased by Nazis, trapped in an exploding building, and turned into an international target." Sam passes him a stack of napkins.

Steve grins at him. He bumps into Sam occasionally as they work, and every time it feels like Sam’s heart is stopping and restarting itself. He wonders, swallowing hard and tracing the line of Steve’s back, if he’s going to get used to it, ever, or if it will always be this intense. He can almost hear Steve say his words again, an echo in his memory, and Sam’s grateful he hasn’t seen Steve’s mark. For all that he can barely breathe and he’s so scared, so angry at himself, the evening is still alright. Steve’s at his back, doing his part and it’s just… nice. Incongruently nice, even.

It sets a pattern for Steve’s recovery; simple companionship, no pressure, but with a slow-thrumming undercurrent, like a bassline playing in the next room you can’t quite hear. Sam doesn’t try put a name to it. As the days progress, sometimes it seems like Steve, that connection (that impossibly connection), and the trust and desire that burns between them, may be the only nice thing in their lives. The stuff now circulating online is devastating. They don't know how many SHIELD locations, operations, resources, and personnel are in the public sphere, but the body counts start coming in and it's... horrifying. Hill pays Steve a visit bearing grim news. The toll of the fighting at SHIELD went much higher than just what he saw at the Triskelion, and that doesn't count all the after-effects of publicizing the private details of an organization like SHIELD- the operations that SHIELD was involved in, now compromised beyond repair. Hill had done what she could with Steve’s plan, had been eerily prepared for retrieving their operatives who were incommunicado, but she could never have reached them all.

Steve is in touch with a few people, but mostly Sam tries to keep away the brass who would distract him, or weigh him down with useless bullshit. Hydra is exposed, and SHIELD is brought down, and there’s no changing that, or what that causes. Besides, he wants- _needs_ \- to keep Steve close to him, and away from everyone else who wants a piece of him. Its an inexorable draw that he has no desire to fight.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes in the evening, as they’re settling down, Sam sees Steve watching him, as Sam slips off to the bathroom to change. That habit- the shyness- starts as some odd desire to protect Riley’s privacy, but next thing he knows he’s feeling self-conscious in a way he hasn’t since he was a kid. Steve follows his lead, or maybe he takes his cue from the way Sam wills his eyes away whenever Steve goes to strip. It’s the first time he’s tried to do this excessively body-shy tactic while living in close quarters, and it makes Sam want to climb the walls. He wears a t-shirt to bed, where he lies awake and tries not to think about the text he’s never quite seen on Steve’s chest. (And then he tries not to think about Steve’s chest. Or shoulders. Or arms, god, or his… And at that point Sam backtracks to getting ready for bed, and what he needs to do the next day. With Steve.)

It’s funny, that drive to cover himself, because after he got out Sam didn't take his shirt off around strangers for a long time. The first time he did was back in a gym, in a locker room for the first time in ages, and it was like a spotlight on him. He wore a tank top and the words were obvious on his upper arm, standing out clearly in deep black.

The strangest, mostly unlikely part was the way no one looked. One tall guy in the weight room checked out his shoulder, just looking carefully, not saying anything. "That your mark?"

Sam confirmed, trying not to grit his teeth.

"On your left." The man snorted. "Man, it doesn't get much vaguer than that."

It breaks something in him, brings him back to high school and his freshman year of college when all the time people would walk by and mouth the words, real casual. Before those words belonged to someone specific, back when they were just text on his arm and he was always so nervous because what if this time it was for real? What if this time the girl behind the bright purple lips sounding out the words was actually the one? It had been a game of perpetual suspense.

Sam's not looking to go return to what he had, but maybe he can take this and move forwards, instead. The problem is he’s not sure where that will lead him. He’s not ashamed of himself, exactly, but he tries to remember Riley’s smile, and it’s blurred. In September it will have been four years; he’ll have been without Riley as long as he was with him. It seems like a major anniversary, but like so many things about Riley, where there should be a sense of grounding instead he’s just left feeling adrift and bereaved. That grief has been his center for a long time, and giving up on that- acknowledging what he’s not thinking about- means giving too much of who he’s made himself. Besides, the way the world is right now- the stunning tragedy of everything everyone knows being cast into doubt- Sam’s not ready to engage in that level of introspection, not when there’s so much going on outside.

 

* * *

 

Agent Romanoff starts forwarding information to Sam. At first he wonders why it’s coming to him- he liked her, and she seemed to trust him enough, but that’s not like they had any sort of close bond. Then he takes another look, and sees funeral times. Dates. Cemetery names.

Steve doesn’t say anything, but his shoulders tense, that gesture that Sam is starting to recognize as guilt and anger.

“You don’t have to go,” Sam points out. “I just figured…”

“Yeah.” Steve nods once. He knows. Sam reaches out to touch him, and Steve grabs his hand and holds onto it tightly.

They attend the first funeral in the afternoon. Halfway through the graveside service it starts raining, the heavy downpour that Sam has become familiar in the D.C. summer. It’s brief, and they continue as if nothing had happened. The dead man’s wife is completely stone-faced.

She seeks them out, once the service is over. Steve doesn’t try to dodge. “This is on you.”

“It is.”

“You know…” the air is oppressive, summer heat taking the fresh-fallen rain and turning it into a sauna. Sam could almost choke on it. “You know,” she says again, “I felt it when he- he was trying to get the pilots in the air.”

“It was incredible of him. He had no warning.” Steve is gentle and respectful. “He made a snap decision, and he led good men and women into a battle that he never could have imagined.”

She nods, swallowing hard. “I was undercover. I felt the- I felt him… and I dropped my surveillance and ran back to base to check in. So I got out in time.” Her eyes water again, her voice heavy with anger. “Agent Correl didn’t. Our details were right at the top of the information dumped, and he wanted to secure the location before clearing out. Took too long.”

Sam’s familiar with the sense of helpless fury that accompanies grief, but this is something else. To live because the other half of yourself dies, to feel that destruction… Hydra is to blame, but Steve set the terms, made the call that set them on a path to holding a funeral for _this_ man, instead of for someone else. (This, right here, is why Sam never understood the desire for command.)

“I’m sorry.”

“It would have been all of us, if Mike hadn’t- if it weren’t for my bond snapping when he… we were dark, we wouldn’t have known anything was happening.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t apologize again. Sam’s pretty sure the agent in question would slap him if he tried. “Agent Correl- I didn’t know him, but I’d like to attend his service. If you’re comfortable with that.”

“It’s in South Dakota. I think you’d better ask his brother, really,” she says, shortly. “He might not be so flattered by the attention. You understand.” She turns on her heel and walks off, her stride so casual it has to be deliberate.

They get back home- to Sam’s place- he’s not really sure when it became ‘home’ to Steve, but he’s glad. He wouldn't want Steve to be anywhere else, not right now and maybe not ever. They throw jackets and ties over the backs of the kitchen chairs. Sam pours himself a drink, and it sits, untouched, on the coffee table.

He lets Steve stew for a little bit. There’s tension all through his shoulders, under his shirt where his muscles bunch up, like six foot of super-soldier is trying to curl in on himself. It’s ridiculous, but Sam sees no humor in it. Finally, when Steve has sat for long enough, Sam gives in to his impulses, reaching out from behind him to squeeze those broad shoulders. Steve sighs, and Sam lets a simple gesture of support turn into a light backrub.

They didn’t bother to turn the lights on when they got home, but as the afternoon turns into evening it’s getting dark in Sam’s apartment. Steve reaches back to catch Sam’s arm, and next thing he knows he’s being guided around, onto the couch next to Steve.

Steve doesn’t let go.

Sam’s breath comes quickly, and it makes his pulse pound, his reactions reeling out of his control. He looks straight at Steve, and it’s too much like staring into the sun, he doesn’t understand what he sees.

He’s been alone for too long. Not _alone_ alone, not like Steve been, but still. This sense of connection and comfort is new and unfamiliar, and damn but Sam could use a little comfort right now. It’s messing with his head, he can’t think straight, doesn’t know what’s going on except that he wants so much.

Steve’s hand traces down Sam’s arm, leaving little sparks in its wake. He catches his breath, and then he leans in. Steve’s eyes are closed and Sam can’t see what he’s thinking but hears the answering hitch in his breath, and then Steve moves to meet him and they’re kissing. And it is fantastic, and Steve’s so warm, and every Sam has ever known is being rewritten in this moment.

He feels Steve’s hand working gently along the buttons of his shirt, freeing him, so close and yet not nearly close enough. He swallows hard, leaning his forehead against Steve’s as he’s caught off guard by a wave of wanting. It’s an internal struggle, what to do next, but he pulls away to just look. Steve’s gorgeous, all gentle concentration, and Sam doesn’t want to see him distracted from this moment.

Sam leans in again, this time to kiss the tendons of Steve’s neck, so perfect and clear. Steve gasps when Sam’s lips make contact, and he jerks Sam close.

“Mmm.” Sam mutters into his skin; words far beyond him. Action, however, is not, and when Steve tugs at the shirt Sam just shrugs his shoulders to slide it off.

Steve’s hands feel so good running up and down Sam’s arms, he wants to catch fire, and he wants to pull Steve even closer. It’s making him crazy. He grabs Steve by the shoulders and nips at his neck, eliciting the most perfect noises. He’s aroused, but it’s not just his cock, it’s everywhere, it’s like his skin is alive and his arm is burning up and he’s going to never, ever stop.

Which is when he realizes Steve has stopped. Stopped touching Sam, stopped moving entirely. Sam pulls back, confused and conflicted because his wants tell him to stay as close as possible but every remnant of reason he’s got left tells him that something is wrong here, that he needs to fix it now.

Steve hasn’t let go of him, yet. He’s got one hand on Sam’s arm, underscoring his mark. The other hand comes up to touch his chest, tracing along his collarbone, and that’s when Sam realizes what’s just happened.

Steve’s seen his mark.


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh,” Steve says. “That’s your-”

“Yeah.” Sam licks his lips, which still taste like Steve.

“I see.” He pulls away, leaving Sam so cold, and stands up to put space between them. “Did you know?”

“Maybe,” Sam says, then reconsiders. “I think so. I needed to, uh, I needed it to not all happen at once.” He doesn’t have the words to explain his history, his absolute faith that he’d found his match in Riley. He turns to the most basic tricks he’s ever learned. “Yours, your mark, what does it...” Asking doesn’t feel intrusive; it feels natural and intimate.

Steve’s strong hands hover right at his collar for a long moment. When he moves again he’s firm and decisive. He quickly undoes the buttons, exposing the hollow of his throat, then the space right above his undershirt. A sentence is scrawled across his collarbone, one that Sam’s seen before, and Steve doesn’t even need to pull his undershirt aside for Sam to read what it says. He meets Steve’s bright blue eyes and damn but he’s never seen anyone so earnest before.

‘What makes you happy’ had been… he’d only been trying to remind Steve not to let go of himself. Seeing it there, in bold, decisive writing, catches his breath in a way Sam had never expected.

“It’s been a while since that was a priority, is all. But it has been. With you. I mean, happiness- I’ve been happy, these last few weeks, with you. So I’m grateful for that.” Steve licks his lips, but he won’t look directly at Sam.

“Yeah?” The sentiment makes Sam want to swell with pride, want to strut around and say ‘damn right you’ve been happy, I’ll _show_ you happy.’ He wants to shout, and he wants to grab Steve and kiss him again, tasting his smile and seeing him look so damn shy and sexy. He also wants to stop to apologize to every one’s ever known, about how he’s been these last four years.

Steve’s not happy, though- he’s staring out the window at the fading evening, as if maybe whatever he’s wanting is out there, instead. “You said you needed it not to all happen at once.”

“Well, yeah, and then there was the thing where you decided to take on an entire enemy force of secret Nazis, pretty much singlehandedly. And I’ve got some… other shit. But I’m getting there.”

“Oh.” Steve shrugs. “Not sure if I am.”

Of every scenario Sam has contemplate, that’s just… not one. He doesn’t know what to do with that. Not everyone with a match is actively looking, of course, but it never crossed Sam’s’ mind that that he’d meet his soulmatch and they’d simply say no.

Steve looks like he’s about to walk out the door, and Sam absolutely cannot let that happen. That can’t happen. It’s unthinkable. Whatever else goes down tonight, the one thing Sam rejects is losing Steve completely.

“I guess there’s a lot I’ve been doing since I met you. Or, really, more importantly, what I haven’t been doing.” And he’s still not looking at Sam, and it’s making him crazy. “I can’t do this, I can’t get distracted right now, and you’re- this explains a lot, really,” he says, but it’s mostly to himself. “A whole lot. A _bond_. I thought...” He shakes his head. “Wow.”

And then he’s laughing at himself, helpless and miserable. Sam doesn’t even decide to get up, but the next thing he knows he’s right there, and then he’s reaching out and pulling Steve against his shoulder. It feels as good as he always hoped, the warm weight of him against his chest, the breadth of him, the way Steve’s hot breath makes it through the thin fabric of Sam’s shirt. Steve clings for a moment.

Sam’s expected to be the one with too much bullshit baggage to handle this. Being wrong is deeply unsatisfying.

When Steve pulls away, he looks up and finally- finally- meets Sam’s gaze dead on. (His are the shade of blue that makes Sam want to ramble like a teenager with a poetry notebook- slate blue, in this dark, but fascinating in every light.) “I’m so sorry Sam. Is there- can we just-” He licks his lips, and tries again. “I want you around, but I can’t…”

“Can’t do this, I heard you the first time.”

“Can’t get distracted like this,” Steve clarifies. “Should I leave?”

Sam wants to snark, to say that if he’s going to be a _distraction_ then it sounds like yeah, Steve should. But he always wants Steve to be nearby, to know where he is, that he’s sleeping safe at night, even if it is in living room and not in Sam’s bed (where he belongs, Sam’s so sure, he’s never been this sure of anything, that’s where Steve should be.) “I like you here” is what he settles for.

Steve nods once. Then he goes into the kitchen and turns on the light. The rest of the evening is more or less their norm, except that Steve makes dinner alone, for the first time, and Sam finally goes to sleep with his shirt off. (If he catches Steve watching him, well. That gives him something to hang on to, for now.)

 

* * *

 

It’s like Steve snaps out of a stupor that Sam hadn’t even realized he’d been in. Suddenly he’s always on the phone with Romanoff, with Hill, with SHIELD contacts and with military types he's sweet-talked over the years. Steve goes to funerals, memorials. He starts handling the press on his own, and even the speeches he gives in declining to interview are the sort of thing that make Sam sit up and take notice. Though, if he’s gonna be honest, most of the things Steve says have that effect on Sam in one way or another.

Since that first week the couch has always been neatly made-up by seven, but now Steve’s up and about as early as sunrise. He comes and goes, occasionally inviting Sam along as he cleans out his (battered, ruined, compromised) apartment or goes to smile convincingly at generals who seem impressed despite themselves. Sometimes Steve goes alone, and comes back sad or angry or quietly caught up in his thoughts.

There's a tightness in their interaction now, a layer of tension thick enough to taste. Steve is waiting, watching, weighing something. Sometimes Steve’s hand brushes his shoulder, or he bumps into Sam lightly while cleaning up after breakfast, but then he tenses. Sam doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask him to stop, but god it hurts so much. He tries reciprocating, but it catches Steve off guard, making him wince. Sam wonders, not a little bitterly, if this counts as a distraction.

It isn’t fair, Sam thinks. He’s loved Riley for so long, and if he’s going to have to give up the lynch-pin of that devotion, if he’s going to have to rewrite his relationship with a dead man, he could at least get a fairy tale with his… his Steve. If he’d once written off the difficult patches with Riley, the things they never talked about (calling family at holidays, extraction companies, Texas) as ‘real life isn’t as simple as a romance novel’, then meeting Steve should have explained that previous difficulty as just part of the challenge of any relationship outside a soulmatch’. So why isn’t it easier with Steve?

It’s a childish, entitled approach, and Sam knows better. He’s seen matched couples divorce. There are human interest stories every few months about soulmatches working out an inequitable relationship in some other way (Sam’s grateful that he and Steve seem to be on the same page about desire, if little else.) There are too many ways this could be worse, and Sam tells himself to be steady and focused now, because the only way out is through.

When in doubt, play to your strengths, Sam figures, and the thing he’s always been good at is people. He’s good at talking to people, almost as good as he is at listening. Instead of addressing their newfound tension head-on, Sam wards off the looming silence with idle anecdotes, open-ended questions, and observations on the day-to-day that surrounds them.

In turn, Steve shares stories from his childhood- how Brooklyn looked, smelled. He talks about the shit he got up to, fights, argument, stupid kid adventures. He confides in Sam, when he’s especially stressed, that he’s afraid someone with an agenda as bad as Hydra’s is going to locate the Winter Soldier- or worse, that the Soldier is back with Hydra already. He gets quiet again, after saying that, and Sam doesn’t know how to fill that emptiness.

It takes Sam a while to figure it out but when he does it’s chilling: Steve’s filling the silence with Bucky.

Those moments when Steve smiles at a memory, and doesn’t hunch in on himself as if guilt were a physical weight on his shoulders, those moments are happy. Sam can feel every time they slip away, though, leaving behind quiet possibility. It always snaps before Sam can act. Steve's consumed, and now that Sam knows why it’s easy to see what’s taking up Steve’s energy: he’s searching for the Winter Soldier. All his recent contacts, his time on the phone, even his informal approach to members of the intelligence community when they come to press him for answers- all of it makes sense, now. He’s going after his friend.

 

* * *

 

Agent Romanoff appears in Sam’s kitchen one afternoon without warning. Sam’s not sure if she feels that once invited in she’s got a standing right to enter, or if she just likes fucking with him, but decides that if she’s going to break and enter then he’s going to use her actual name. Besides, her warning to leave is humanizing in its earnesty.

“Can’t.” Steve glances up, shrugs, and goes back to his laptop.

Romanoff gets up in Steve's personal space in exactly the way that Sam has been refraining from. “Rogers, come on. You can dodge the press and you can misdirect the brass and maybe, maybe you can handle Hydra.”

“Thank you for the glowing assessment, Agent Romanoff.”

She ignores him. “But can you keep them from getting into each other’s business? What are you going to do when- not if, when- Hydra starts using them against you?”

“The politicians? Or the reporters?” Steve’s pretty openly amused, but he’s still focused on his laptop. It’s very twenty-first century of him, and it makes Sam feel better about the way she's still leaning in.

“Does it matter?” Steve looks away.

They must have had this fight before, because Natasha throws up her hands, and makes Sam take a walk with her. They review physical security concerns- the initial team securing the apartment is long gone, lost to the tide of politics- and briefly stopping to chat with the FBI agent who seems to be their current approved watchdog. Natasha is sincere, polite, and respectful to the man’s face, and then as they’re walking away she turns to roll her eyes at Sam. “Well, he might be better than nothing.”

“Worth every penny I’m paying him,” Sam agrees.

Her laugh is husky, but there’s nothing seductive or even sexual about the sound. From such a beautiful woman Sam can only consider that an accomplishment.

Seeing her outside a crisis, she’s been nothing like he expected. She’s attractive, and she knows it, and she’s not embarrassed or afraid or anything else about it. There’s a wonderful carelessness to her, for all that she’s obviously a woman with some very serious concerns. She reviews the security protocols on Steve's laptop, but she gently mocks him the whole time. The topic is definitely beyond Sam’s computer know-how, but she sits him down and makes him install a few things. “It’s not going to stop anyone with limitless computing power and determination, but you can keep out most private citizens and inconvenience Hydra.”

The evening quiets down in a pleasant way that Sam has missed. Natasha's presence mellows the thrumming tension between Sam and Steve. Steve picks out music. Sam mixes them drinks, and Natasha keeps daring him to make the strangest concoctions she’s ever heard of. Sam has to run to the store twice, for mixers. They sample oddly colored beverages, and it’s incredibly wasteful, because Steve insists they should stay mostly sober out of solidarity with him. By the time Sam shows her out his is the only porchlight still on on the street, and she turns back in that yellow light to look at him severely. “You’re going to have to keep an eye on him.”

“I know.”

Her answering smile is small and, he suspects, sincere.

Sam thinks about her warnings, and quietly lets his gym membership drop, and starts shutting down the unnecessary connections in his life. He doesn’t go out of his way to say goodbye to anyone. For one thing, he doesn’t know if or when he’ll leave, and for another, too many of his friends and acquaintances gave in to prurient curiosity, or worse, since SHIELD fell. There are always going to be those who find it easier to be angry with those who reveal corruption than at those who actually engaged in it, Sam figures, and he doesn’t begrudge them their ill-will.

The world’s gone a little mad, sure, and he’s right by someone in the crosshairs, but if those first few weeks afterwards had been filled with bright moments, with smiles when he’s not paying attention and gentle thoughtfulness, then the absence of that is all the greater now. Natasha’s visit only provide an acrid contrast. Sam’s not sure what, if anything, he’s really letting go of.

 

* * *

 

Quitting his job turns out to be easier than he’d expected. He had called in, right after the battle of the Triskelion, feeling guilty because people were going to need support now if ever, and was told that his absence would be ‘discussed’ upon his return. He followed up after a couple of days had passed, and was this time told to ‘call before coming in’ and ‘it’s better if you refrain from further contact with any of your clients’.

When he finally does go in, everyone watches him but no one comes up to say hello. You’d think, Sam muses, that in an organization built around and for veterans of all America’s wars and peace, he wouldn't be so exceptional. He can’t say for sure if the reason Martha stares is because of the ‘fighting alongside Captain America’ or the ‘betrayed and brought down a major government organization’, but it doesn’t really matter.

“You’re a lot higher profile now, Wilson,” his supervisor tells him gently. There are some other men there, middle-aged white guys going up the chain a ways. Sam’s not sure who all of them are. “And you need to consider how that’s going to affect our clients."

Sam nods. “Sure.”

“Besides, son,” and this is a portly man with a bald spot that his crew-cut doesn’t hide, one of the guys Sam’s never seen before, “we’re going to need to re-examine your status as a security risk.”

It turns out that as he had once had clearance, any questionable actions on his part are considered a ‘high risk’ factor. And, apparently, turning up in an assault on a government building- even one that turned out to be enemy controlled- wearing classified technology, recently stolen from a secure facility, and then having images of this circulated in international media, all added up to his actions being considered… questionable. “We’ll need to do some extensive investigations,” the man declaims.

“Uh-huh.” Sam considers this for a moment. He considers what he had been planning on asking for- a strong recommendation, maybe, and some leeway given his circumstances, and decides to say 'screw it'. “Well, let’s face it, that’s a pretty shitty use of time even for the VA.”

There’s a pleasing look of shock on these guys' faces. Sam hasn’t been a practicing social worker for long enough to get that world-weary sense of helplessness in the face of bureaucracy, but he’s had more experience with the U.S. military’s sense of organization and priorities than he likes to think about, and while the department of veteran’s affairs may be a separate authority that doesn’t mean it’s any better. The air force has seemed a solid decision in the wake of his mother's death, but it had chafed sooner than he'd expected. Sam's a trusting sort, and not a natural contrarian, but he's smart enough to recognize a problematic command when he hears it. He and Riley had fought about that, more than once- they'd disagreed, sometimes drastically, on what was worth escalating. Sam’s a thoughtful man, but he appreciates the ability to act, directly. It’s a little like flying: you don’t just get there faster, you also enjoy the journey more.

“So, uh, I’ve got some other things I need to be doing with my life anyways, Thank you very much, sir,” he addresses his immediate supervisor, because it really isn’t this man’s fault, “for your assistance and guidance. Best of luck, and all that.”

Senior command is flummoxed, but there’s a quick flash of relief on his supervisor's face. Sam smiles as he cleans out his desk. Eventually Martha comes up to ask what's going on, is he alright, is he really leaving. It breaks the ice, and other co workers come by, some to gawk but mostly to give surprisingly sincere well-wishes. The rest of the day is a wash, caught up in good-byes, and it’s only a little bittersweet, really. Martha hugs him as he’s turning to leave.

 

* * *

 

“I’d like to meet her,” Sam says. “If you don’t mind.”

That’s all it takes. Steve looks at Sam carefully, then sighs. “She wants to meet you, too.”

They roll into the parking lot of a well-kept nursing home with only an hour of visitor's time left in the day. It’s a pretty place, cheerful and dignified. The big windows let in plenty of the evening sunlight. The employees manage to be friendly with an air of competence, and many of them obviously recognize Steve in a personal way, not just as Captain America. (Sam’s learning to tell the difference.)

Sam loiters in the doorway, at first. The old woman on the bed is, really, in remarkably good condition. Steve sits beside her, holding her hand, but he waves Sam in after only a moment. “You’re- you’re-” she’s mystified, and frustrated, and Sam’s heart goes out to her.

“Sam Wilson, ma’am. I helped this guy break your organization. Very sorry about that,” he adds, hastily, because no way does the founder of SHIELD look kindly on him right now.

She frowns at him. “Steve, what is going on? Is something wrong at SHIELD?”

Steve’s breath catches, and Sam can’t help but reach out to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Peggy, do you remember what we talked about? Do you remember seeing SHIELD on the news recently?"

It takes a few minutes of coaxing, but eventually she does seem to remember most of current events, eventually. “Well, that didn’t go as we’d hoped,” she finally notes. “So, you’re the young man Steve’s been spending all his time with? You’re lucky, you know- you get to see Steve Rogers with the breaks off."

Steve blushes and ducks his head. “Right, no, Peggy, please don’t share everything embarrassing you know-”

“Don’t worry, Steve. Some of it’s classified.” Sam laughs again, but he exchanges a glance with Steve, wondering if this once shining woman even recognized the joke she just made.

They talk, mostly about Steve. Peggy’s stories meander a little. She tells them about the commandos, about the stupid things that a dozen young men living a war zone and doing the impossible can get up to. “And Falsworth had everyone convinced for weeks that his mark was ‘disreputable.’ When Morita caught him writing it on, he got so angry-” she coughs, and Steve passes her water. “Made me glad once and for all I never had one. Can you imagine if the most important thing your partner ever says to you is ‘disreputable’?”

“You just want to make up your own mind about everything,” Steve teases.

She breathes hard, but her voice is clear when she says “You’re damn right I do.”

There are soft laughs all around. Steve breaks in, giving her the chance to rest her voice. “Nick’s funeral is tomorrow.”

“Nick?” She frowns, blankly. “Do you mean Nick Fury? What happened to Nick?”

Steve’s breath catches, and Sam can see him debating and then giving up. “Sorry, I must have… it’s not a big deal. I can tell you about it later, if you like. Maybe you should rest now.”

The conversation goes downhill from there. Sam’s quiet for too long and when he finally speaks she’s confused and disoriented by his presence. The sun is right in his eyes, and he steps away, ostensibly to clear his vision, while Steve talks gently to her. It only takes a few more minutes.

Steve's silent all the way home. It’s incredibly unfair, Sam thinks, that she had to stay with them long enough to see her life’s work unravel, without being able to be included in any of the aftermath- the examination, the rescue, or the repair. That was no way to say goodbye, and he wonders if Steve expects to ever see her again. He wants to reach out to Steve, and he can't tell what's holding him back: is it Steve's hesitation, or his own?

 

* * *

 

Steve’s dissatisfaction burns, creating an itch under Sam’s skin that he can’t understand and can’t ignore. He goes out for a run alone one bright morning, and under the shade of a flimsy D.C. cherry finally calls Asha. He’s been dodging everyone he knows for a while now. Even talking with his sister seems impossible- when she met Meke she knew, simple as that, and the gap between her experience and his is too great.

He’s been mourning Riley for years. That mourning, that loss, is entangled in so much of what makes him Sam: he and Valerie do Christmas cards and periodic emails, Riley’s parents call on Memorial Day, he left the air force, and all of this because of Riley- since he first put the pieces back together after his Mama died, every day had been about Riley, even if only in his honor. It had hurt so much that he’s maintained this carefully measured distance, relying on his phone and staying put in D.C. rather than risk facing someone else who shares that greif. He’s been very, very careful managing his emotions. But if he was so careful, how did he not see this coming? How does he explain it to anyone else, now?

How is he supposed to explain Steve?

So he skirts around the issue, not mentioning exactly why he’s planning on leaving town for an indeterminate period. Asha’s thrilled to hear from him, warm and and happy and familiar, and she absolutely jumps on the offer of a sublet.

Packing is hard. He’d ditched most of his things when he enlisted in the Air Force, his childhood home having been packed up and sold only months earlier, save for a few boxes of memories shoved in a budget storage locker. Living in the barracks is not conducive to collecting objects, but somehow in the years since he’s accumulated… stuff.

There are gifts from people he’s worked with: the client who worked out her nervous energy in pottery and gave out her best pieces to employees at the Center, and the man who had taken six weeks to bicycle around the country and returned with a box full of ridiculous miniature knick-knacks, each carefully selected for the individual recipient. Sam didn’t need a chipped plastic bald eagle that balanced on the point of its beak, but now that he had it he doesn’t know how to let it go. He figures Asha can live with some of it, but he doesn’t want to load his friend down with the remnants of a life he may not be leading anymore.

It’s the shirts that get him, though. Work shirts, tee-shirts, shirts he only wears for running and sweatshirts and sweaters and he fucking owns three sports-coats, because he’s been a respectable member of society for so long. Riley would laugh at him, he thinks, sitting here having an existential crisis among a pile of clothes. He throws out most of it, sending shit to Goodwill and to his church. He’s left with two bags, some boxes shoved in the back of his closet, and a sense of finality.

They wrap up the sunny stretch by attending Nick Fury’s funeral. Sam considers it an appropriate irony. After all the people whose deaths they were, indirectly, responsible for, he now gets to mourn a living man who shares that very responsibility. Fury seems to enjoy the mystique of living past his own funeral, which makes no sense at all to Sam, but very few of the former director's choices make sense to Sam. He’s not sorry to be disentangling from the remnants of SHIELD.

It isn’t until Steve tells him that he doesn’t have to come that Sam realizes he never asked. Sam just assumed that he’d be there as Steve searched. He tries, briefly, but it’s hard to imagine letting Steve go after this alone. He can’t stand the idea... he's not sure what idea he can't stand. He has complete and total faith in Steve- as a man, as a leader, and as Captain America. Yet when he weighs against his life here, he can't find anything that holds him back as strongly as Steve pulls him away.

 

* * *

 

There’s something much less intimate about living together on the road. Sam would have expected the reverse- if you’re traveling with someone, and they’re the only person you see more than once, shouldn’t your time together feel more important? But it’s just a routine of tracking down addresses and finding nothing, and quietly sitting in archives and libraries trying to find building plans and old maps that might have a little something useful.

Within days they're entirely bored, restless, and while they’re not snapping at each other yet the tension is ratcheting. Their list of leads is miniscule, then grows, then shrinks again as they quickly determine which possibilities are actually just red herrings. It’s exhausting- Sam’s almost bought tickets to three different countries in the space of a single day, each time hesitating only to learn that their intel was probably bad or irrelevant, and there’s no need to go there just yet.

When they do match up a name with a person, or coordinates with an real sites, it seems that everyone who knows anything has mysteriously left town. It’s a little surreal. Sam doesn’t think this is all Hydra’s current plan- they’re busy- but perhaps those who have seen Hydra in action over the years have no interest in crossing them now that they’ve gone public.

The routine is interrupted by the oddest news. Sam’s on the bed with his notes on the Oslo lead- the strongest so far- spread out into the chronological order of puzzle pieces, while Steve loiters by the window, brooding. Sam glances up, and then back down at his notes. “We have- look, in Oslo, there’s no date of death for that woman. Last time we tipped our hand by asking in town too much. If we get to her fast, we might actually get a chance to talk to her direct and get some real answers.”

Steve hmm’s agreement, and wanders off to the bathroom. Sam bites his tongue against saying something he’ll regret.

They’ve got BBC videos queued up on the laptop, something to fill the silence in the hotel room. He's not even paying attention, too caught up in what he’s reading and feeling, but 'assassination' and 'known Hydra associate' and 'extensive cybernetic enhancements' filter through. "Steve!" Sam calls and he reaches for the volume, even as Steve slips into the room, the bathroom door clicking shut behind him.

“Though the attack was conducted in public, witnesses are unable to identify the man in question, and so far reports on his actions conflict." They cut away to a series of clips, on-the-spot soundbites from stunned people babbling about how it was 'incredible' and 'they didn't believe it'. "It might not be him,” Sam cautions.

“It might be another cybernetically enhanced super-soldier with metal limbs?” Steve’s already digging through maps, looking for their scant South American resources.

The news clip includes fuzzy, distant cell-phone shots of the assassin. More, Sam figures, will emerge as news outlets start ponying up for the higher-quality pictures. “That’s limbs, plural, Steve. There’s metal limbs, or, I don’t know some sort of skintight metal armor.”

“It could be Hydra has him back, that he’s been… changed, again.” Steve is dancing around the appropriate words- modified, upgraded, further enhancements.

Sam frowns as the image changes. “I’m pretty sure it’s not. This guy is skinnier.”

“Okay, but weight loss in response to the dramatic alterations-” Steve's babbling and Sam's heart goes out to him, because when the Winter Soldier vanished, he _vanished_. As terrible as news of an assassination is, at least it would be news.

Googling produces a closer-up photo, from someone who was obviously more interested in the assassin’s firepower than his face. The shot is in focus, for it’s still at a distance, but cuts off at the shoulder.

It shows some pretty indisputable distinctions. For one thing, unless the photo was flipped this is a left-hand shot, and the assassin’s arm looks like nothing Sam’s ever seen before, with flesh still showing through clearly. Steve might explain that one away, though, so Sam goes for another distinguishing feature.

“Steve, he’s black.”

There's a very long pause. Steve doesn't sink down so much as he simply deflates. “Okay, so, probably not Bucky.”

Their eyes meet, for a long moment, and then they’re both laughing, and laughing.

Still, when they can breathe again, Steve’s got his disappointed face on. “Come on, man. I’d say this is a case of no news is good news,” Sam says. He’d rather chase a ghost all summer than see Steve’s reaction to the Winter Soldier being named in another assassination.

“It’s not unconnected,” Steve says. “We should go take a look around.”

Sam gives him an unimpressed stare.

“It’s just an instinct. Sam, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a well thought-out plan, but all this researching is for nothing if we don’t take the leads that come to us.”

“Steve.” Sam wants to grab him and shake him. “We go see about her- in Oslo, like we planned- and try to put the pieces together, maybe get some way to guess where he’ll go.” _Or what he’ll do,_ but there’s nothing to be gained from reminding them both that this man, though hurting so badly, has an ugly, bloody history of being a danger to those around him.

“Or I could try going to a place he might just get curious about.”

“So you’re going to track down one assassin by chasing after an entirely different one? Just because that’s more active don’t make it a smart idea, man. This-” he taps the paper in front of him- “is a lead, that guy is a distraction. You really expect the Winter Soldier to turn up at a scene that hot?”

“Well, we definitely can’t expect to see him in Oslo.” Steve looks up at him, big blue eyes wide, and Sam can see him decide to go for the hard blow. “What would you do if it were Riley out there?”

“That’s unfair,” Sam snaps back, stung.

“Why? Because you’re still in love with him?”

 _’In love with him’_ echoes in Sam’s ears. In love with Riley.No one has ever said it out loud before, not even Sam. It hangs in the air a little too long, before Sam realizes he should react: agree, deny, go back to the actual topic, whatever.

“Maybe,” says Sam, but the word tastes wrong in his mouth, tart and unappealing. The conversation’s gotten away from him, from both of them. They’re tense from inaction, and from the quick rush of false hope, and if they had any sense at all they’d wait and have this conversation later. Sam already knows it’s not going to happen that way.

Steve holds his hands out, apologetic, and Sam waves off the sentiment again. He’s not especially interested in hearing it right now. “Would you go after her, then?” Asks Steve. He doesn’t say ‘while I go to Bogotá’, but it’s there, anyways’.

Sam’s instinct is an immediate hard ‘no’. For one thing, he doesn’t like the idea of either of them going into an unknown situation alone; there’s no backup except each other. For another, he doesn’t like the idea of Steve on a strange continent without Sam, and that’s playing with an entirely different set of emotions.

He gets angry about it, because he feels trapped; if Steve’s going to Bogotá then he can either follow along, or do the smart thing. Neither option is good, but the choice feels worse because Steve _isn’t listening_. Which Sam probably should have seen coming, but still. It’s not that he doesn’t want Steve to get to his friend, it’s that he’s worried, almost panicked, that Steve’s blind obsession is going to get him into something he doesn’t get out of again.

On the other hand, there’s Steve doing everything he can to get Sam to leave right now. Sam gets up, walks away from where they’d perched side-by-side on the edge of the bed, and wonders how he can want to be right next to someone and yet miles away, both at once. “You’ll come right back?”

Steve breaks into his blinding grin, and it sickens Sam even as it warms him. Goodbyes are, unsurprisingly, awkward. He’s not sure what to say- he wants to tell Steve ‘good luck’ and ‘be safe’ and ‘find me again fast’ but he doesn’t know what Steve is ready to hear from him. Steve holds out a hand to shake, though, and that’s the final straw for Sam.

“Come here,” he grumbles, and pulls Steve close, and then they’re both absolutely clinging.

“I’m sorry,” says Steve, again, and Sam has no idea why or what for. “When we get- when we’re done with this-”

“We’ll see,” says Sam, and Steve nods against his shoulder. Then he pulls away a few inches. He looks Sam dead on, and there’s never been a gaze like that before, Sam’s sure, never someone who held the entire world on their shoulders and their life so open and true. He’s transfixed.

Steve leans in and gently brushes their lips together. There’s a kind of sadness, and perhaps Sam’s imagining it but he thinks he feels finality in it, too. It sends a shudder across his skin, but he doesn’t move away until Steve does.

“I’ll see you on the other side.”

Sam hopes so.


	4. Chapter 4

He doesn’t get his answer in Oslo, of course, although he does get copies of certain documents that the “researcher” in question had made. (Her daughter who guards them seems just as happy to be rid of them. Hydra has been by twice, once shortly after her mother passed and once less than a year ago. Sam finds her in the process of moving out, and tells her the truth, such as it is, and she tells him good luck and to please forget he met her.)

It’s in her living room that he sees the news on television. There’s been an explosion, locals are claiming it’s a bombing, in some farmland outside of Hesselbach. No explanation for has been offered by any authority. Sam doesn’t understand the dialogue, but he’s able to recognize the level of destruction and pull out his phone to start searching. It’s a safe bet that this is Hydra-related. The woman turns up the volume, listens for a moment, and then turns to frown at Sam.

“You had better go,” she says, and he does without complaint, thanking her for her troubles.

He’s barely off the train, standing in the middle of Oslo Central Station, when his phone rings. He answers before he can reconsider. “Hey, Sam,” he hears, and if that isn’t the richest, most textured voice he’s ever heard.

“Hey, Steve.” He’s grinning. It’s stupid, because this can only be bad news, but already it’s just so good to hear Steve’s voice.

It is bad news, and Sam’s grin fades as Steve’s words seep through. “You think the site was a reprogramming centers,” says Steve.

“Yeah,” says Sam, because from what they can tell the Winter Soldier was trained, written, and everything short of being actually coded. The files that Steve hangs onto so tightly- the one thing he’s as possessive about, now, as he is about the shield, despite his distractedness- is mostly a compilation of dates, locations, and obscure abbreviations, but there is just enough observation from outside sources to start to put the pieces together. They’ve found nothing to link the Winter Soldier to SHIELD, so they’re left with content without context- or occasionally the reverse- and no immediate way to turn the data into information, short of visiting the locations in person, or tracking down the people who had used these names.

Despite the urgency of cracking the file, Sam knows what’s coming. “You think it’s him, what, revisiting old stomping grounds?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Steve’s breathing sounds… resolute. How the fuck does he even do that? But he’s still talking, and as little as Sam wants to hear it, he forces himself to listen. “If he’s there- if he’s even been there recently- then that’s where I’m going.”

Steve’s being Steve, he’s being Captain America, the man who puts loyalty above forethought, who has no limits because he refuses to accept them. He’s being the man with a plan, but not the man who patiently waits for things to make sense. And Sam is fucking terrified, because this sort of charging in blindly is either going to leave him frustrated or get him killed, but it’s not going to get Barnes back.

“Steve,” he says, and his voice is steady by force of will alone, “I’m not sure that’s the best approach.” That’s alright, he decides. That’s a reasonably mature, even-tempered statement. “You’re gonna scare him the fuck off if you keep this up, you’re just gonna keeping making stabs in the dark-”

“Sometimes you don’t have time to stop and turn on the light,” Steve interrupts, even as Sam’s getting mad at himself for losing the moral high ground. “And if you’ll trust me just a little here, I do think I know him better than you do.”

“Not anymore,” Sam shoots back, and Steve catches his breath.

Sam’s a really shitty person sometimes. His hands shake, and his breath comes too fast. He realizes he’s blindingly furious, because Steve is- Steve is-

They don’t say anything for a minute, and Sam slumps against the filthy wall of the train station, feeling lost and out of place. “Look, I’m sorry,” he starts, because sometimes even when you’re right you’re still in the wrong.

Steve cuts him off. “I want to try and see what I can find out about it,” he says, but what Sam hears is ‘I want to ask around about Bucky’.

Sam keeps working his way through their list, and Steve doesn’t come back.

 

* * *

 

When he looks for the people the files allude to, Sam wonders how committed they were to Hydra. Were they true believers? Were they scientists who found no other work in their unique specialties, and made some dark bargain in order to pursue their calling? Did they go in with their eyes wide open, understanding what they’d be doing and choosing to leave behind their morals for the sake of their science?

It doesn’t help that the only records of many of them have to do with their most human, ordinary lives. Sam’s approach grows broad. He finds that certain doctors who were lauded, a quarter-century ago, for their work in human enhancements quietly stopped publishing and moved to towns not so far from sites on their list, where the only evidence is the birth certificate of the man’s youngest child. He find dates listed that only shortly predict rumored successes in synthetic body replacements- Sam is learning all sorts of things about prosthetics and failed super-soldier attempts.

(There are other things in that file, too, abbreviations that make no sense to Sam until he considers behavioral modification theory. Then he closes it again with a soft slap of paper, and refocuses on immediate concerns.)

There’s always more information about the destruction to be gleaned from contacts and context, so Sam keeps trying to incorporate that, as well. Steve sets up a check-in plan with Sam, but they rarely manage to say very much. Sam’s lonely in a deep, surprising, visceral way. He hasn’t traveled alone much- getting sent from here to there by the Air Force is very different- and he’s certainly never spent so long alone alone in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. The people around him have enough English that he gets by (and he smiles a lot; that helps) but there’s a deep seated feeling of not fitting, or of missing something very important. Sam legitimately can’t tell if he’s wishing for his apartment and job and community, or just the country where he speaks the language and knows the rules, or if it’s someone a lot more specific. He finds that travel blurs together very quickly.

“I never can remember which airport is which,” Sarah tells him, but then she’s only flown out of the US once, so maybe her problem is that airports in the States are all too similar.

They do their best to catch up, which means Sarah tells him about how big Jody is getting and his newfound obsession with baseball. Sam tries to share his life in kind but it’s hard, keeping his secrets for her sake as much as for the sake of the mission. It’s very obvious to anyone who might try to listen to their conversation that Sarah isn’t hearing any details, and Sam trusts in that, as much as anything else, to keep her safe.

Even existing alongside Captain America makes Sam nervous for her sake, and for Jody’s.

He still doesn’t talk about Steve, except to say that he’s helping a friend. As much as Sam loves his sister, they’ve never been able to read each other very well, and it’s likely that she doesn’t have a clue that things have grown more complicated. Instead he shares, just a little, about Riley. The usual pang in his chest is missing, and for the first time he’s able to tell a funny story about Riley and flying without tearing up. It occurs to him that maybe he’s learning to… not to miss Riley less, but to cope with it better. He’s supposed to be an expert in ‘life goes on’, but it seems he’s still only just coming around to believing it for himself. He doesn’t say this to Sarah- she’s still capable of a truly bitter ‘I told you so’ and Sam’s not quite sure enough of himself for that- but he does tell her that he wishes she had met Riley.

“Me too,” she says, and he promises himself that he’s bringing Steve by once they’re both back in the US, whenever that may be. As if summoned by Sam’s new resolve, a text from Steve cuts the phone call short. There’s been another unexplained bombing- ‘explosion’, says the press- no casualties reported but one hell of a mess, and inevitably he wants to investigate this one, too.

Sam considers meeting him there, but Steve doesn’t ask, and in the end Sam can’t quite justify the offer. What he’s working on is productive, if tedious. He comes to appreciate the expertise of the national and state librarians, and the enthusiasm of local history societies. He sits on the steps of a beautiful museum in Brussels, enjoying the sunshine before he sequesters himself inside, wondering if this is what the life of a research-based graduate student is like (he suspects not) when his phone rings again.

They talk about the sites Steve’s chasing, all the things he’s not finding. Sam doesn’t think that just showing up and examining the ruins of a stripped base is going to prove anything, but Steve’s on his fourth this summer, and he’s not done yet. He won’t be done, Sam fears, until he figures out why or finds the Soldier

“You still can’t prove it’s him,” Sam points out gently.

There’s a silence on the line in place of a shrug. “This one was… clearer, I guess. He’s more obvious about what he’s doing. Someone even saw a foreigner that could have been him in town. I think he was trying to leave a message.”

“What message is that?”

“I said he was trying, not that he succeeded,” said Steve, but he’s got the spirit of humor in his voice for the first time in far too long.

Sam doesn’t say that it could still be a trap. He doesn’t bring up the signs of other Hydra activity, the things that remain unexplained by the leaked information, like the Bogata assassin, and so many others. He doesn’t point out that it appears the Winter Soldier has lived the last half a century or more in fits and starts, and there’ s no reason to expect his actions to make sense from the outside. Instead, they talk about the things they’ve seen. Steve says that he’s never traveled this much outside of the Army either, not even with SHIELD. “They tended to drop us where they needed us, and then take us straight back,” he says.

“How’re you liking it, then? I mean, you getting to travel, doing your own thing…?”

“Kinda wish we were in the same place,” says Steve, and it’s so simple that Sam gets angry at himself for the way Steve’s words take his breath away.

 

* * *

 

No one comes after them, and Sam isn’t sure if that’s because Hydra doesn’t care about their activities anymore, or if they’re just so far off track that they’re not a threat right now. It still keeps him up at night, sometimes, the worry that Steve’s alone and the most impressive target Hydra could want. Working the list helps. He finds one of the men he’s tracking, an old Hydra escapee, a turncoat who had a change of heart after years of what Sam can only define as torturing innocents.

When Sam reaches him, the old man’s sitting in a rocking chair, a revolver on his lap.

“I have been waiting for one of you to come,” he tells Sam calmly.

Sam nods, watching the gun carefully, but the old man doesn’t seem inclined to use it. The day is early yet; the bright summer morning in this quiet town incongruently peaceful. Sam’s gut churns, though. He hasn’t identified everything this man did, but between the few faded mimeographs from that one woman, and the context, and the sight of the Winter Soldier on that bridge- Sam doesn’t need too much detail in order to understand what this man did.

“You aren’t here to kill me,” says the man.

His name, or one of the names he used, once, is Dr. Schneider. Sam wonders if that’s how he thinks of himself now. “No, I’m not,” he agrees.

“So what do you want?”

“The Winter Soldier.”

The man sighs. “Of course you do.”

Sam sits down on the sofa, an ugly green number from the eighties. The furnishing all have that mid-late century look to them, as if purchased all at once, now faded with time but not so valuable as to have been preserved. It’s an unpleasant place to be..

“I stopped working on him, you know. Hydra did not have further use for my techniques.”

“And yet you’re still pulling air,” Sam notes.

“They wanted my knowledge of his previous development. There was some concern over the transition from the old to the new.” The man sighs. “They sent me here to be conveniently out of the way, but not inaccessible.”

Sam nods. For all he knows that’s true, and it would mean a lot of bad things about this old man, but would also mean he’s a potential gold-mine. “So, you going to tell me anything about him?”

The man shrugs. “They will kill me if I do.”

“Yeah. What are they going to do for you if you don’t? Give you a medal? They’ll find out I was here, if they don’t know already.”

The man shrugs again. His face is wrinkled, and though he’s white, as far as Sam can tell, he might have been from pretty much anywhere in Europe. The color has long since leached out of his hair and skin, and even his eyes are faintly cloudy. It makes him look half-dead already.

_I wish Steve were here,_ Sam thinks. And then he takes it back, because as much as he wants to not be doing this alone, he’s still glad to spare Steve from having to sit down across from this monster in the shape of a little old man.

The man-monster offers information up freely enough, so Sam has no reason to threaten or manipulate him. The tidbits shared, though, are eerie. “He’ll know where to go,” says Schneider. “Not the details, I think, but he always needed to go home after. He may not know what he is going to, but he will go. An instinct.”

Sam wonders if blowing up buildings with rocket launchers is ‘instinctive’ to the Winter Soldier, and thinks that he’d rather not know the answer. It is possible on several levels, including the possibility that the Soldier is supposed to destroy any Hydra facility that can’t give the correct confirmation codes. There’s been indication of similar protocols, and more alarming yet, from the things Sam’s seen and heard. There’s no solid proof, but it lines up with what he knows of Hydra and their priorities. Schneider shrugs, says he doesn’t know of any such protocol, but that doesn’t mean that none exists.

Military service largely consists of accepting the way things are, and doing an incredible amount of drudge work, and waiting, and traveling. Sam’s learning that collecting intelligence contains many of the same elements. He knows that ethics and self-determination are important in soldiers- so very necessary for any humanity to survive- but he also knows about the gray areas. He knows about prioritizing your own survival, and the mission.

He knows that he’s not turning his back on Schneider until the revolver is on the coffee table, out of Schneider’s easy reach. He also knows that there’s no reason not to pass him his cane- so lightweight, a modern marvel and useless as a weapon- because a little human civility one way or the other won’t really make a difference, on the grand scale of his life. He knows it will still take the man a minute to gather his legs and rise, much less to walk across the room. He knows that he’s leaving him to a terrible fate, when Hydra’s cleanup crews come through, as they surely will- if not now then someday, next week or next year, just to neaten up the loose ends.

He knows that he’s young and long-legged, and his stride is very swift. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to hear a gunshot from down the street, not in a place this busy and loud. He likes to think he wouldn’t.

 

* * *

 

It’s summer, but Sam feels cold all the time. It’s like the AC is always set too high. He sleeps poorly and even when he spends the day outside he orders hot coffee instead of a cold drink. He keeps his head down, and shivers through Steve’s calls.

“I think he might be getting more lucid,” Steve tells him

Sam doesn’t disagree.

“He left actual evidence this time- just a piece of a Hydra symbol, but think about it, Sam, those bases are mostly unmarked. He had to have been trying to dig something out and make it obvious what he’s doing.”

Steve’s optimism leaves Sam feeling restless and wrong. How long will Steve keep chasing a ghost? (Forever, Sam knows that.) The events, the big finales to long-gone horror stories, the gratuitous explosions, have Steve bubbling with gratitude and renewed energy. It bring up a petty, ugly seed of jealousy inside Sam, one that says ‘he’d rather chase after this cold-blooded killer than listen to me’.

He lays in bed after hanging up the phone, and stares at the ceiling. He could stop this, go home. (It never was his search.) He could go to Steve, stay by his side while they chase their tails in circles. (He said he was coming with Steve.)

Except he can’t, because that won’t get the job _done_. It’s more than the drive to complete a mission, by now Steve’s need to find the Soldier is just… important to Sam. If Steve fails then Sam will feel a failure, no matter how little he thinks he care about the Winter Soldier himself. He’s invested, even if Steve would rather continue following memories and violence than be near Sam. (Sam knows he’s bitter.)

It’s been long weeks, and his mission, such as it is, has to be an open secret in the intelligence community by now. He’s not subtle. Sam hasn’t been denied entry to any country yet, but he’s getting twitchy, because surely this can’t last. Something has to give, and it isn’t going to be Sam.

He’s edgy, that night, his head aching from spending all day in the basement with the smell of books. (All library basements smell the same, Sam’s convinced of it. And they all look like they froze in 1979, doesn’t matter if they were built earlier and then remodeled or built since, and it doesn’t matter what language the books are in. It will always, always have a certain claustrophobic sense that sends Sam right back to high school.)

Sam has nightmares, new ones, and old ones that he thought he’d buried years ago. The caring, and the uncertainty- Sam’s a bright guy, he’s trained in the ways of the human mind, he can analyze out exactly what's going on here. He’d rather not, though, and so night after night he wakes up from visions of Riley, of Steve, falling. He dreams that he’s in the field but his wings don’t work, he dreams of the wounded and desperate he’s pulled out of combat, but now they’re beyond his help. Or they’re Hydra. He dreams of his entire section going down when the helicarriers start throwing actual fire at the population. He dreams that Agent Hill and Asha are the same person, except she’s secretly Hydra, and when she comes to rescue him and Steve they’re dragged away to cages underground, and the entire lab is staffed by small children. He wakes up sweating.

Sam starts spending a lot of nights sitting up and reworking his notes, analyzing what he’s found so far. He didn’t understand, at first, why so many little hints and clues were still available. At the time Hydra hadn’t bothered to be thorough (a memory something observed in the distance, a mimeograph kept in an attic- you’d have to know what you were looking for to have any hope of turning this into sense, but still, Hydra let these things remain), while nowadays they’re busy scrambling to cover all their trails. It becomes clear, though, after the third time Steve takes a tip that leads to an active base- the first two were referenced in the file, this one is apparently unrelated- that the Great SHIELD Leak has devastated Hydra as thoroughly as Steve had hoped. It goes so much farther than just ending one terrible project and disrupting a dangerous tool, this has become an agency-wrecking affair on both sides.

So maybe they’re just lucky that Hydra is too busy to deal with all these little details that Sam is using as his research. Or maybe it isn’t a coincidence that earlier that same evening Sam got into Bucharest there had been a couple murdered well outside the tourist district, no suspect and no useful evidence. Sam stays in, and waits for a contact to confirm that the woman’s face pinged in some databases as a known Hydra affiliate. Maybe that situation is a coincidence, and maybe it’s just a coincidence that the maps in the library hadn’t been successfully taken out in the arson attempt from that week. But Sam’s starting to think that the Winter Soldier knows where they are, and what they’re doing. Between the second glances he gets on the street and the unlikely crime, Sam can’t get out of town fast enough.

Sam wishes he knew what the Soldier was doing, though.

The thing is: He’s making actual progress. At least, he’s pretty sure he is. These sites- it’s hard to say for sure that they had all the details in common, but they mostly seem to have functioned as operational bases. Yet an ordinary, ‘let’s run Hydra operations from here’ base probably wouldn’t require neurological experts or surgeons mostly known for their experimental (sometimes for their amoral) techniques. These are more than research facilities, that Barnes is blowing up, that Sam’s tracking down. There have been five destroyed so far, and four others Sam has tentatively identified as likely sites, and he’s pretty sure he knows what they are.

These are where the Winter Soldier was deployed from.

On the upside, Sam’s pretty sure that means that eventually they’ll run out of bases. It also seems a pretty clear declaration, on the Soldier’s part, that he’s broken his ties with Hydra. He’s certainly doing his best to eliminate their strongest tools against him.

On the other hand, it isn’t a declaration of much more. Sam’s seen a lot of people do a lot of bad things, some of them for no reason other than that they were hurt before. He’s got no reason to think that the Winter Soldier is going to suddenly become a force for good in the world. He has no way of knowing that the Soldier won’t end up hurting Steve.

Maybe that’s the reason he sleeps badly at night. Maybe that’s why when he comes up behind the Soldier, in his dreams, half the time it’s a face he’s never seen before, someone truly a stranger. He lashes out but in his dreams he’s too late, there’s Steve and he’s going down and Sam _doesn’t_ have his back. He wakes up to check in on schedule, for that tiny reassurance that a few minutes’ conversation can bring.

“I want to see you,” Steve says. Sam’s not sure who called who, just that he was exhausted and then they were talking.

“Alright.” Sam takes a deep breath. There’s something that feels a little like falling, a little like jumping in that moment before your wings are ready. “You want to meet up somewhere?”

“I- I don’t actually think it’s a good idea,” Steve corrects himself. The words cut, and Sam gets up to look out the window. It’s too soon, not yet any light from the window except the streetlamp. “Sorry,” Steve ads.

“Why do you-” Sam cuts himself off, tries again. “Way to send mixed signals, my friend.”

“I know.”

They need to have this conversation, but he knows that demands and accusations are going to feel good right now and then terrible from the morning until forever. “If you stay away, we can… loosen, I guess you’d call it. It’s a thing, there are-” he takes a breath, tries to order his thoughts. “I know some people, specialists, they help people who don’t want- who want to make their bond less.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Don’t play that game,” Sam snaps. He actually snaps at Steve, and for the first time he recognizes that it’s not just the rush of desire that burns in him when he looks at Steve. It’s anger, too, a slow simmering resentment because as much as he’s overwhelmed and confused, he’s apparently more ready to face this down than Steve is.

Steve swallows audibly. “Okay. I don’t- Sam, I don’t want to get rid of- of us, of you, of our... It’s- look, why are you doing this?”

“This?” There are so many things it could mean.

“Why are you here. Why did you come with me, and why did you stick with this- this stupid search, even  after I got distracted and- you’re still working on it, Sam, and I don’t… you don’t like him.” The last comes out plaintive, and oh-so-young. Most of the time Sam only thinks of Steve as a fellow veteran, a man his own age, a man out of time. Now, though, he remembers that Steve’s really a couple years younger than he is, and they’re both- they’ve done so much growing up young, in some ways, that they missed some of the other ways a man needs to mature.

“I don’t think the man you knew is still there,” Sam agrees.

“Then why?”

Sam shrugs. The obvious answer- because it’s important to you- sounds too trite, too needy, for this hour of the morning. There’s more to it, and Sam’s not sure how to put it together. ‘Because someone needs to figure out what happened’ is too vague. ‘If you’re going to try to save him you need to know from what’ is beside the point, really. ‘Hydra did this, they need to be held accountable’ is true, but it doesn't answer why he's concerned with this man and not one of their other victims. ‘Because it matters to you’ is naive and wrong, both.

“Because I need to see it done,” he says, which is the vaguest, and truest, answer.

Steve sighs. He deflates, a little, and Sam’s not sure if that’s because he wanted the answer he got, or if he’s waiting for Sam to say some magic words.

They don’t have much more to say, or they have far too much to say for this hour of the night. “Steve,” Sam starts to say, and then stops. What does he get to command, now? Will he tell Steve not to come by until he’s figured out what he wants?

He doesn’t get a chance to figure it out before Steve’s hung up.

 

* * *

 

He’s on the tarmac at the Triskelion, and his wings are gone, and he looks up and he shouldn’t be able to see that far, but he can see the helicarriers. There’s a battle in progress, but he’s wearing fatigues, not the black suit, and above him the Winter Soldier is so fixated on his task that he has to win, there’s no question. So he pushes at Riley and just as Riley is about to slip off the edge, Sam knows that’s what comes next he _knows_ and Riley doesn’t survive that, he can’t-

Sam jerks upright, suddenly, the buzzing of his phone interrupting his nightmare.

“Wilson,” he mumbles.

“Sam? Hey. It’s me.” Sam blinks. He’d been expecting- no one, he hasn’t been expecting any cals. Still, his half-conscious brain had figured maybe Steve, or one of his shiny new European contacts. Certainly not Asha.

“Sam?” she says again.

“Here,” he agrees, because Sam Wilson’s Mama taught him to be polite at all times, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily up to full sentences at, oh, two-thirty in the morning.

“I think there’s someone here,” she says, and Sam blinks rapidly, adrenaline clearing away the fog of sleep.

“Are you safe right now?

“I don’t know, I’ve been up for hours, I think someone followed me here-”

“You calling on the landline?”

“No, I, ah, I have international minutes, so I figured-”

“Don’t tell me anything else,” Sam snaps. Agent Romanoff seemed paranoid, but Sam trusts her judgment in pretty much all things security, and if she says ‘don’t discuss a risk via unsecured cell’ then Sam will go with that. “Just- if you think you can, you go get in the car and get somewhere safe. If you’re not sure you can, or if you're not sure they saw you, just stay in the apartment and keep it dark, okay? Don’t let anyone know you’re home. You leave town otherwise, go to a friend, don’t call them before showing up.”

Her breathing has gotten shaky, and Sam is shaky, too. How did he not see this coming? Did he think he could just put a person in his home, when he’s making himself a target in every way possible?

Sam pushes the creeping terror aside long enough to reassure Asha, to promise her that nothing’s gonna happen. He doesn’t say he’s coming home, but he’s throwing his shit back into his bag as they talk, and putting research notes aside, into the plasticine packages he’s been acquiring for exactly this purpose.

He doesn’t call Steve until he’s already at the airport, too busy distracting himself from a combination of guilt and anger by burying them under a pile of efficient tasks. He’s not sure if he’s glad to reach voicemail. Talking to Steve right now would be hard; on the one hand, the danger Asha’s in is all on Sam, because he chose to get involved, we went in knowing the risks and he’s stayed the course of his own free will. On the other hand… at the end of this day, this is all for Steve. Without meaning to, he’s redefined his life around Steve (not the first person to do so, perhaps, but the first to do it like this, with so much pulling on him.)

Taking off feels like a statement. He’s been checking on the history of a base that Steve thinks might be next- and if they’re right about that, then this will be the first time they’ve anticipated the Winter Soldier’s move. It will mean that they’ve (mostly) cracked his code, come to understand what he’s doing, and if they move fast enough it could easily be the first step in reaching the man, or at least, in reaching out to him. It could be the culmination of everything Steve’s been working for. Sam doesn’t even hesitate before letting that opportunity go, just as he never hesitated in dropping his life to follow Steve. These thoughts keep him occupied, keep him from picturing the possibilities back home.

He doesn’t know what to say to Steve right now. The message he leaves is brusque, lacking in detail, but Steve will read between the lines. He’ll understand why this situation takes precedence. Hopefully. If not… if not, then Sam’s truly working alone.


	5. Chapter 5

His flight touches down just as the sun is dipping towards the horizon in D.C., illuminating the city from behind as they come in. When he turns his phone back on, it starts vibrating so hard he thinks it’s going to explode out of his hand. He’s got so many text messages, missed calls, voicemails. He checks; it’s one number, a dozen texts and almost as many calls.

“Shit.” He presses talk, and gets sent straight to Asha’s voicemail.

Listening to the messages incites an ugly sense of helplessness, but it kills the time as he waits at customs. “Hey Sam, I know it’s early there, but call me back?”

“Sam, please call me back, I’m worried.”

“Sam, I saw someone out there. I’m scared to go in to work, I think they followed me last time.”

“Sam, I’ve locked all the doors and windows and the shades are down and the house is dark but I’m afraid to call the cops and I don’t know who else to call.”

She’s a steady sort of person, and she’s gained calm and confidence in the years since they met. All of that is absent from her voice in the final message, and Sam hears raw fear in it’s place. “Where are you, Sam?”

By the time he makes it home, Asha’s a mess. She’s a brave woman and Sam has faith in her ability to face down the worst of situations in the office or to stay strong for someone else in pain, but an immediate and continuous physical threat is different. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor, out of the line-of-sight for the window, hugging her legs to her chest, her eyes wide and dramatic against her skin. She’s so still, like hearing the key in the lock made her tense up. He coaxes her into a chair. It takes little bit for her to breathe deep and look him in the eye, and when she does talk she’s terse, and possibly angry. “Are you okay?” he asks, intensely worried. The last thing he ever wanted was to get her involved in his shit.

“There were men. Outside the apartment.”

“Men, plural?” He asks.

“There was one guy loitering around-  white, long hair, scruffy looking. He was there when I left for work, and at first I just figured he was homeless in the neighborhood but he was around pretty much every day, and he didn’t…” She blinks, drifting for a moment. “He was really focused, didn’t have a bag of stuff or anything. And then there were these two other guys came along after dark, as I was walking back here and I couldn’t see them clearly but it was two guys and they kept following me, and I latched the door and set the chain but I think they were still outside watching.”

“Were they with the first guy?” Sam asks.

“No,” she says. “They followed me home again last night, and they were getting real close, but I didn’t really want to call anyone in, you know? And the first guy came along and saw them and one of ‘em drew a gun, and I thought this neighborhood-”

“These guys ain’t from this neighborhood.”

She huffs, but there’s a touch of amusement to it. “You can say that again. They ran, and he just kinda stood there and watched them go, but I don’t know- he turned and looked at me, and that’s when I called you. This morning, I was gonna go to work but as soon as I stepped out the door those two guys were back, and then were coming at me, and I just jumped back inside like you said. Except then the first guy came up behind them again, and I think he had brass knuckles or something, ‘cause he took a swing at one of those two and his hand looked funny when he knocked out that guy, and the guy he hit went down and stayed down. I got in and latched the door and everything and left the lights off.”

“You seen any of them since?”

“When I looked again all of them were gone, and there wasn’t an ambulance or police or anything. I been staying away from the windows.”

“Good, that’s good,” Sam says absently.

“Except I saw a shadow outside the door, against the window, right about noon, and it coulda been… I don’t know, it coulda been that one guy, the one with the scary left hook.”

That’s all very interesting news. Later, Sam will think it through, figure out how the pieces fit together. Right now, though, he needs to get Asha the hell out of there. He sets her up with a plan to get going, to stay with friends who aren’t yet expecting her and to leave no sign of her presence until Sam can figure out what the hell is going on. It takes them maybe fifteen minutes to get her bag packed and send her off; she’s scared to go, but more scared to stay, and Sam’s heart breaks a little for her. She never signed on for this, and she could still get hurt because of Sam’s choices. He’s done her wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he says, right before guiding her out of the door. She shakes her head and tries to smile, but she can’t just say that it’s alright when it so clearly isn't. Sam settles for hugging her, wrapping her up tight and trying to communicate all the reassurance and faith he can. She smiles at him, wobbly and unsure but sincere.

When she’s gone, the place feels emptier than he remembers. It should feel nice, if creepy, being the first time he’s seen his home in long weeks, but it’s sort of lonely. Sam turns on lights, fidgeting, grabbing his knife out of a drawer and sticking it in his pocket because something is off but he can’t say what. He jumps when the phone rings, but it’s only Steve. (Hah. Only.)

Sam starts to give him an update, only to be interrupted. “I’m touching down at Langley in less than an hour. I’ve got reason to-” his voice drops, and then he picks up again with confidence. “I’ve got reason to think I’m on to something. A… a contact at the FBI says there’s an ongoing investigation- just- just hang on, I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m on the ground.” Steve’s talking with limitations, verbal cues which mean he’s worried about the phone or can be overheard where he’s calling from.

“Roger th-” Sam cuts himself off sharply. He leans forward, neglected instincts all back in play as he looked around, checking the surrounding for whatever motion caught his subconscious attention. There. The twilight is dimming fast but there’s still enough light that he can just barely see the face so close to his window. Not _a_ face, but _the_ face, the same one they’ve been chasing for months.

“Sam?” Steve asks faintly, his voice suddenly sounding as far away as he really is. “Everything alright?”

The Soldier spends a long moment staring through the crack in the curtains at him. Then he slowly steps away, and Sam draws a breath, his lungs grateful for the air again. Sam stands up to approach, cautious, the phone cord stretching out behind him, but by the time he pushes the shade aside there’s only the faint smudge on the glass to show anyone has been looking in.

“Sam?” Steve sounds so far away, and the Winter Soldier seems so close, and this is all backwards.

“Steve, when you land, you come find me. I’ll have my cell, GPS is on, you come find me right away, do you hear?”

“Sam, what’s-” He clicks the receiver down hard, and ignores the stinging across the ink on his arm. He opens the door and glances around, but it’s right there, tucked into the frame of the screen door: a single index card. On it, in clear blue pen, is a list of five coordinates. The back simply says ‘Be careful.’

Four of those coordinates look familiar; Sam’s memory is hardly perfect but he recognizes them from weeks of research, finding the names and locations of places that might have existed, and been used by Hydra. None of them have been destroyed in recent weeks, as far as Sam knows. The fifth he doesn’t recognize at first, and then he looks at the number again and oh shit, that’s nearby. That’s- is it D.C.? Virginia, probably, if Sam’s remembering correctly.

The implications are frightening. Is this a trap? Is this the Winter Soldier, knowing what they’re doing and aiding and abetting? Does he want Steve and Sam to meet him at one of these places, or is he just documenting his intentions? Is he trying to communicate that this last site is like the first four? Is the entire note an oblique threat, or warning?

It’s probably not a threat, Sam decides, because standing there on the path up to his doorway is the Winter Soldier, lit from above by the lonely halide streetlamp that is all his apartment complex shells out for. And if it were a threat, well, the man would probably be more obviously armed. This doesn’t stop Sam’s pulse from jumping, hard and fast, and he jumps back inside without thinking, ducking down beside the doorway.

It’s one thing to trace the man across Europe. It’s another to see him casually standing outside his damn door.

There’s noise outside, the sound of a scuffle, and Sam peers around, cautious. A guy sprawls on the ground- carrying, it looks like, but no shots fired- and there’s the Winter Soldier backing away from the man. He looks up at Sam, and then back down at the man- the spy? the agent? the Hydra operative?- he just took out, and then he runs, right down the center of the street.

Sam curses, and it’s a split second to decide but there’s nothing else for it. If Steve passes Sam running full-out as if he’s standing still, and Steve is matched by the Winter Soldier, then odds are against Sam being able to catch this guy on foot. Steve’s bike is parked in Sam’s slot, stored for the duration fully fueled and ready to go. He’s never actually questioned why, exactly, there’s a key for it on his keyring, but he’s grateful now. The guy is still down on the pavement, but he's starting to move, and Sam is left with teh choice of either staying and dealing with him, or going right the fuck now.

The bike purrs to life, and Sam races down the street after the Soldier, praying that no cops are lurking to enforce helmet laws tonight.

The Soldier’s already behind the wheel of an older sedan, rolling slowly down the street until he sees Sam in his rearview, then taking off. Sam never learned how to handle a chase, and he’s giving it all he’s got to keep the Winter Soldier in sight, not worrying about little details like where they’re going. Steve’s bike is a gorgeous machine but right now Sam can see the upside of an easy-handling crotch rocket, compared to this powerful but heavy thing. The Winter Soldier finally ditches him in a less developed area, half-finished buildings both commercial and residential all around. Sam almost sets the bike down trying to pull up so damn fast on the rough mud patch that serves as parking for the construction grounds where the Soldier has left the old Honda with the door still standing open.

The evening is muggy, like every goddamn miserable summer Sam’s ever spent in Virginia, and now that he’s still, Sam can feel the sweat trickling down his forehead and neck, from exertion or fear. Across the street there’s a nineties-looking commercial building, something that could be offices but is probably industrial, with outside lights showing off the scruffy landscaping. A poorly-disguised guard fumbles with a flashlight, which is all the incentive Sam needs to _move_. The series of sheds and trailers on his side of the street don’t look like much; there’s an obviously abandoned construction site office, which seems like the best of bad choices.

Inside the trailer the muddy boot prints are layered deep. There's a certain amount of paperwork on the desk, but when Sam goes to look through it, it leaves a thick layer of white dust on his hands, and the paper seems to be nothing but blank employment forms. Sam’s spent the summer slowly picking up hints and details about how Hydra designs their bases: with lots of back doors, or decoy fronts, usually. This is it. The presence of people with the lack of recent work fits. This has to be where the Winter Soldier went.

Sam’s not fool enough to go in fearlessly, but he has dealt with this type of fear before. If the Soldier wanted him dead he would be, so while he’s a little worried that this base might explode and take him with it, he doesn’t think that was particularly the plan.

He follows the boot prints out through the back and there it is, a simple door, leading into a dug-in shed, with a latch that’s been torn and hanging unevenly on its hinges

(God, Sam wants backup right now. The right choice, the good choice, would be to wait for someone.)

The guard across the way must have notice the vehicles- the man might be confused but probably isn’t a complete incompetent, and if this location is supposed to be secure then Sam’s presence is going to draw attention quickly. He looks around, considering his options. Steve should be landing soon, and should be coming to meet him, but Hydra bases can be remarkably warren-like, and Sam’s concerned that if he waits Steve will turn up to find nothing but an angry guard and an empty complex.

Then there’s a bang from below, and Sam is done considering. He yanks the door open and runs down the (narrow, steep) stairs before he can reconsider his choices. The pit smells rank with sweat and fear.

It leads a grungy, cavernous room, lit by an institutional fluorescent glow that sinks eyes and casts skeleton shadows on the faces of the Hydra agents the Winter Soldier is facing off against. He’s up a balcony, a story and a half up from where Sam's stairwell let out, but so close. It’s a ledge of some sort, a place for a person in charge to look down and see all that is happening at their command. (A sniper’s spot, dressed up as a status symbol.)

One of the Hydra agents reaches for the Soldier, backing him towards the lip of the overlook. Barnes is moving, and Sam was was right earlier, he’s faster than should be possible.

He jumps as one reaches out towards him with a- is that a cattle prod? it is and Sam wants his wings with total desperation, because he can’t do anything from here.

The Soldier lands on his feet. If anything, the man looks worse than Sam remembers. He’s lost weight, and any pretense of grooming (beyond shaving, and even that seems belated) has gone. He looks at Sam, then past him and to the left. Two more guys come running at him with weapons up- there must be a door under the stair, because Sam didn’t hear them coming down. The Winter Soldier knocks the first one back into the second, and it’s brutal, close, and fast. Sam’s not surprised at the outcome. (The man matches Captain fucking America in single combat, he’s not going to have any trouble with Hydra’s more expendable soldiers.)

To Sam’s left is a corridor, long and open. The Winter Soldier looks at him, then looks at the corridor. Sam hears another noise behind him, from the stairs, and he runs.

It’s a retreat, absolutely necessary, but a small voice inside of him is angry about it anyways. There’s the sound of gunfire from behind and he throws himself full-bore downpast the concrete-block corner in the hallway. Did the hostiles get down? He jumps behind a too-small crate, hoping that if they’re not looking then they won’t see.

The guys coming through are not fucking around: body armor, helmets that offer protection and simultaneously are just broad enough to obscure their faces from the cameras, the works. They’re armed, handguns only, and they’re moving fast and military. They aren’t US troops, which is Sam’s only point of relief; they could belong to some agency trying to carve their place by cleaning up SHIELD’s mess, but at least it isn’t the Guard or Army. He ducks down at the sharp sound of gunfire. The Soldier goes tearing past him, swinging a hard left and moving faster than Sam would have thought possible. He stays low, backing himself behind some now-empty shelves as a flimsy excuse for cover.

It works well enough; the eight hostiles move past without even glancing his way.

Sam waits ‘til they’re clear, counting the seconds, until, at twelve one-thousand, he’s good to move. He heads up behind them, keeping his distance, following by the sound of their boots echoing in the empty halls. It’s fine as he makes a right, left, left, and then he’s all of a sudden in a hall that’s far too wide and far too open, and there are two armed hostiles right the fuck there. He almost trips over them.

He freezes.

They freeze.

Sam moves first. It’s over in moments and afterwards he couldn’t say what, or how, except for ‘desperation’, but now he’s got a weapon and neither of them do, so. There’s that. One takes off, and Sam lets him go. The other is down, unconscious at the least, and though Sam's inclined to check he hasn't got the time to deal with it if the man is still alive.

The hall opens onto a concourse, with a half-dozen small doors along the way leading to... what? Mad scientist offices? Hydra supply coordination rooms? Evil Nazi combat gear storage? Sam gives up on those quickly, and heads for the end of the hall that has a double-door, one side standing ajar.

Beyond is a sizeable room, glass-fronted and all white and chrome, beautifully done. Sam’s not sure where Hydra gets the aesthetic, but then again, maybe its one of the things they’ve come to share freely with SHIELD. It’s intimidating. The room itself is stripped- a few abandoned boxes of junk sit on the shelves, and there are places where furniture (or machines) have clearly been unbolted from the floor and removed.

There’s a big chair in the middle of it all, as if for a CAT scan, or a dentist’s chair.

Behind the chair there’s the Winter Soldier.

Sam looks around and it all comes clear: If Hydra had any use for a base right in the area- and of course they did, if SHIELD was headquartered so close then Hydra had to be thick on the ground, and of course they were doing things beyond just laying their sleepers in wait at SHIELD- then an operative working in the area probably would have been deployed out of this base. Which means the Winter Soldier. Which gives this location something in common with those sites Sam has researched, and Steve has visited. Which means that this place is probably going to explode very, very soon, whether because it’s already rigged or because of the sheer quantity of firepower about to be leveled at it.

Three of the eight are down, but the Soldier’s still got numbers working against him, and it seems like the only thing keeping him in the fight is that the Hydra agents are deliberating sticking with non-lethal options. They’re slowly backing the Winter Soldier into a corner. There’s a strange play of emotion across his face- if Sam had to guess, he’d say fear and confusion.

That’s what gets to him. It’s stupid, since he doesn’t know that they’ll continue to limit the lethality of their attack, but Sam hollers for their attention. When that doesn’t work, he fires a warning shot, which ricochets off the wall and punches a hole through the ceiling. It makes his ears ring, but apparently does the trick.

One of them refocuses on Sam, reaching for his sidearm- shit, they’ve got tasers in hand but definitely aren’t going to be using those on Sam. Instinct brings him down, weapon still up. It’s not very useful, with so little left on the floor- a few wastebaskets, and some detritus, but what once must have been an intimidatingly clean aesthetic is now just a room without cover. He can see a blur of motion behind the guy, hostiles shifting quickly.

Sam shifts his weight so he can lunge back through the door, and the guy aiming at Sam topples forward. Behind him stands the Winter Soldier. He’s staggering, moving rough, and Sam starts towards him again without considering the consequences.

Barnes raises his gun, arms shaky but steady enough for the purpose, and aims directly at Sam.

 

* * *

 

Training for pararescue is exhausting, and the medic training is a huge part of that. It isn't just the material they learn, or the style, though all of those are draining. They’re doing it in the absolute ass-end of summer, which is to say the whole fucking time from May through September, and they bake every day in the desert air. Field exercises are miserable.

Some days he looks outside at the relentless sunshine and cannot for the life of him remember why he thought it was a good idea to spend eighteen months learning how to jump out of planes and study basic anatomy. The end goal had made sense at the time, sure. But the way he's getting there just doesn’t anymore

He's not the only one affected. The attitude around him becomes slowly, subtly, toxic. They go out on the rare nights when they actually have leave, and they drink and try to keep their spirits up- Sam learns to like microbrews because it’s the southwest and they’re every-fucking-where he goes. The camaraderie these evening build is strange, and Sam doesn’t entirely trust it, but he’ll take what he can get.

Still. Sometimes, if he has leave all day, he’ll go into town and just sit in a bookstore or diner and think about all the people around him who manage to find certainty in their lives without enlisting.

They do field exercises and Sam dies a little inside. Yes, he knows now how to set an IV, how to check for certain kinds of trauma, how to move an unconscious person from here to there. On the other hand, there’s a repetitiveness to the exercises that Sam understands intellectually but not emotionally. By the time the summer is nearly over, he’s done. He doesn’t care that they need to keep practicing, not just until they get it right but until they will _always_ get it right. He just… doesn’t care.

They’re doing a simulation. A mock-up,of a battle scenario, but without even bothering to simulate the hostile forces- it’s just a matter of trying skills outside the classroom. The guys are all joking around, letting the tension drain a little. It reminds him that while he may not care about what he’s doing, he still likes the guys he’s doing it with.

One of the guys cracks a joke about the supposed "fallen" and the way they look on the ground. “Hate to haul their fat asses out of here,” he says. Was it Mitson? Mituniewicz? As the years go by the names and faces from that summer fade, though the lesson never will.

“Them I’m okay with,” the man to Sam’s right counters. “But leave the enemy to die.” Everyone laughs halfheartedly. They’re all crammed in together, surrounding the sergeant running the exercise and wide open spaces be damned, because everyone needs to stay out of the way.

The sergeant stops. He turns, and looks at the unfortunate guy to Sam’s right.

Then he calls the entire exercise to a halt.

Sam’s terrified by proxy; you don’t want to stop an exercise like this in the middle. That means someone done screwed up it means everyone is about to be very, very unhappy.

They gather round, hot and tired and angry and wishing they were wrapping up for the day. Sam’s shoulder to shoulder with the guy who screwed up (oh god, that’s not a place he wants to be standing), but no one’s getting singled out.

“Why are we medics?” The sergeant’s face is dead serious.

Silence.

“Come on, you’re all big boys gonna grow up to be real live pararescuemen. Why? Why do we do this?” Sam looks down, feeling guilty for a reason he can’t quite name. “It’s not just us, it’s every damn medic in the armed forces, we all go and we learn this shit, right down to the guys who’ll only be patching up their section after PT. Why?”

It's too busy out there to really be quiet, but for once the noise of a few dozen men doesn’t drown out the sound of nature around them. Sam carefully doesn’t swat at the bugs buzzing around his head, trying to land in his sweat. He doesn’t move at all.

The sergeant seems content to wait them out, for now, while the entire exercise has turned to watch.

“Anyone?” He doesn’t expect a real answer, but seems disappointed nonetheless.

“Because we share a profound respect for human life,” the sergeant states. “Because we care that people live. That’s it. That’s all of it. You’re not judge or jury and you’re not a soldier; your job is to rescue and retrieve. You’re in the business of life. And don’t let me ever,” he meets Sam’s gaze, then looks past him to the next guy, ” _ever_ catch you forgetting that again.”

 

* * *

 

Their eyes meet. The moment stretches, and on impulse Sam waves a lazy salute. He’s terrified, but there’s no easy end to this standoff- he’s not going to fire at Barnes, which means standing there, waiting to see what he does, trying not to shake. The only way out of this is through.

Barnes steps back out of the light, slowly lowering his weapon, and Sam can’t quite see his face. The Soldier- Barnes- shifts. He’s wearing black body armor, but not his uniform- has to be surplus, or law enforcement supply, or something. It serves the purpose of making him harder to see, in this dimly-lit basement at night, and it obscures his movements. He's still a shadow, of his own volition.

There’s a drip of dark liquid running down his silver arm, and Sam gestures towards it without quite reaching out. “They get you?”

Barnes frowns- Sam can see that one, at least, if only because it looks so natural on him- and takes another step back.

Sam steps forward without meaning. “Hey, you got someone to look at that?” Barnes doesn’t say anything, and Sam takes one more step. “Let me just see, real quick.” He thinks of the doctors Barnes has known, researchers who’ve given up on right and wrong and supposed caretakers turned torturers and accomplices. “No doctors, I promise, just… let me see it for a moment, that’s all. I can clean it up.”

He hopes that's the truth- he doesn't carry a kit around, but he's used to being resourceful.

Barnes stares at him, at his hands, and Sam glances down. He’s still armed, though he's just carrying in his left hand. He drops the magazine and unchambers the round, kicking the empty weapon away and trusting that he'll have a few moments warning before he’ll need it again. Besides, this is what he’s supposed to be doing, right now.

It seems to be what Barnes was looking for, because he relaxes a little. Sam figures that he knows Sam’s helpless (god, Sam misses his wings) compared to him, and while that’s not very reassuring to Sam it may be the reason that the Soldier stands down long enough to accept aid. Sam takes this as his cue, and starts his easiest, most confident walk forward.

Barnes jerks again when Sam gets within arm reach, but holds still as Sam starts looking him over, first visually and then a gentle pat down. He never actually disarms, but Sam’s dealt with weirder situations (a lie, but put them all together and surely his history at least matches this). He looks around the old-fashioned theater, the few boxes of miscellany left on the shelves, and wonders if there might be enough abandoned supplies there to constitute a first-aid kit.

It’s eerie, how still the man can stand while Sam’s checking him over. He winces when Sam’s hand goes over his upper side- probably a rib, hopefully _just_ a rib, because Sam is not prepared to handle anything serious internal- and there’s a bit of wetness and a tear in the fabric of his sleeve. The barbs from a taser are still stuck in him; one seems caught on his protective gear, right in the chest, but the other snuck in under his left arm. Sam winces, and then tugs them both out, eliciting only a grunt. Sam considers sitting him down, but the chair at the center of the room… that doesn’t seem like a good idea, and taking the time to find another place would mean giving Barnes a chance to change his mind. Besides, the man’s still startling easily. Sam’s not going to make him any more vulnerable.

“Can you take off your shirt?” He asks, gentle as he can. It would help a lot to be able to check the skin, to make sure the barb's damage is superficial and that the point over his rib is just bruising.

Barnes frowns at him, and starts to lift his arm, expressions flickering from neutral to pain so fast Sam can barely see it. Sam reaches out to catch his arm before he can hurt himself. “Hey.” He reaches very, very slowly behind him, and pulls the knife from the back of his belt.

The Soldier stares at it, and Sam takes both his hands to open it slow. Neither of them move for a moment, then Sam reaches for the hem of the Soldier’s outer shirt. “May I?”

Barnes nods, once.

The next five minutes are absolutely surreal. Sam carefully cuts away the gear away from the man in front of him, trying not to tug or wrestle and wishing he had a decent pair of shears instead. Bares doesn’t say a single word, and barely moves except to lift his arm and let Sam help him out of the remains of the shirt. When he’s done, he blood on his right arm is already getting tacky, and Sam’s glad to be getting the shirt off before it can stick on entirely. At no point does the Soldier put down his weapon.

Sam takes a moment to inspect the arm wound- almost done bleeding already, how nice, hurrah for super-human enhancement- and has the Soldier apply pressure. He steps away, leaving the last of the body armor behind him and gritting his teeth to turn his back on Barnes. Quickly (but not hurriedly) he strides over to check first one shelf with boxes of miscellany, and then another. There’s nothing to sew with, and Sam’s not thrilled about the possibilities for sterilization, anyways, and the gash is small enough it should heal. Eventually. He frowns at the makeshift supplies.

The soldier doesn't flinch away, though Sam knows for a fact that this slow cleansing hurts worse than the knife that caused the wound. He goes very still, and his face turns very hard, and Sam is absolutely not thinking about what he’s learned these past weeks. Putting those people he’s seen, and learned about, together with this man’s incredible pain tolerance is…

He drops the thought at the same time he drops the last of the gauze debris. “All done with that. May I check your ribs?”

Barnes just watches him, blue eyes steady, and Sam takes it as the best assent he’s going to get. His hands are light, anyhow, and checking through his undershirt to see if there’s anything really wrong. “Please tell me when it hurts,” he says, a little absently. Even the Soldier’s breathing is steadier than it should be, and Sam doesn’t want to rely on the baseline of ordinary men. He presses gently at the space between the seventh and eighth rib and the Soldier tenses but doesn’t fully wince. “That one?”

A nod.

“Breathing hurts?”

Barnes starts to nod, then hesitates, as if confused. “A little,” he equivocates, and Sam finds his voice especially rusty in the dark of their creepy medical room.

Sam shrugs, and continues. Satisfied that there’s nothing dramatic happening abdominally, and already resigned to not getting a proper diagnostic, he finally steps back. “Okay. I think that’s just your ribs; six weeks, use ice, take ibuprofen, try not to be too active-” he quirks an eyebrow but Barnes doesn’t smile- “and you keep that other wound clean. You see anything wrong around it, or it isn’t mostly better in four weeks, you get real help, understand?” It's all standard, something that an ordinary man who engaged in Barnes's activities would have heard a half-dozen times, but the Winter Soldier has never been an ordinary man.

Barnes nods, again.

“Can you- do you have someone you trust to help you, do you know of any doctors-” Barnes backs away, putting that godawful chair between them, but doesn’t take his eyes off of Sam. “If you can get better treatment, you should.” Barnes starts shaking his head, very slightly. No, wait, he’s not, he’s shaking all over, and Sam lets it go.

“Just, lay low, try to heal up before you do anything like this again. Give it some weeks. And get help if anything gets worse.”

Barnes is backing towards the door they both came in through, the one that leads to the hall to the great open cavern. He takes one more step and then pauses, going still in a way he hadn’t before, the sort of absolute freezing that only happens when your brain and body are in complete disharmony. The sort brought on by only the deepest shock.

“Bucky?”

It’s Steve’s voice, as he steps out from behind the half-open door. Barnes breaks, turns, and runs into the shadows, the opposite direction down the hall. Steve’s footsteps grow closer, the echo filling the room and bouncing off the empty walls. Sam watches where Barnes runs, but already he’s out of sight.

Steve looks at Sam, then at the way Barnes had gone. He looks at Sam again.

“You gonna chase him?”

Steve doesn’t answer for a long moment. When he does, it’s like his strings have been cut, a subtle slump throughout his body. “No. No, not right now.”

There are more noises, the sounds of many footsteps together, but Sam doesn’t care because Steve’s looking at him. Steve looks dead at him and it’s been far too long, it doesn’t seem like it should have been been but Sam’’s been drowning and he didn’t even realize. There’s no singing from the choir above, and the heat Sam feels, has always felt, will always feel, is burned away by the absolute clarity of the moment. He knows, from the throbbing on his upper arm and from the bottom of his soul, that this is what and who he needs and wants. This is desire, this is love.

So of course Steve says “We probably should get out here.”

Sam laughs and laughs.

 

* * *

 

The adreneline crash is rougher this time than it’s been in a while, but maybe that’s the emotional whiplash of fear and love tangling together. Dodging the FBI is almost all Steve’s doing. The bike is missing when they look for it, and Steve’s convinced Barnes took it. He doesn’t seem to mind. Then again, it’s the first time the Winter Soldier has accepted anything from him, and maybe that means something.

Going home is easy- not logistically, but personally. With Steve by him it feels so much more like coming home than it did a few hours ago. There’s a sense of power, of importance, to this evening, but Sam’s not feeling any urgency.

“I’m sorry for leaving like that,” says Steve. It's an apology, perhaps one that had to be said, but Sam finds it unimportant right now. He's not interested in dwelling on things that are over.

“It was… we do what we gotta do.” He means it sincerely, not passive-aggressive like his sister always does. Steve's determination and loyalty are among his greatest virtues, and Sam's done complaining just because it played out inconveniently for him.

Steve smiles at him, small and sincere. “Yeah.” He clears his throat, glances down and then meets Sam’s eyes again. “You saved his life.”

Sam nods acknowledgment. He’s not going to explain it if Steve doesn’t know already.

It’s fine, either way, apparently. Steve leans in and kisses him oh-so-lightly, just once, looming as best he can and Sam has never felt so sheltered before. “He let you help him,” Steve adds, sounding stunned and maybe the slightest bit petulant.

Sam snorts. “Maybe. A little. On his terms.”

“Thank you,” Steve pulls away to look him dead on, as if that can better communicate how completely he means it. “Thank you for that.”

He looks at Steve and it’s like… like he doesn’t even have to look. There’s nothing startling, in Steve’s thanks- even if Steve couldn’t say why Sam acts as he does, he still gets it, and he gets Steve. He couldn’t _not_ have jumped in; because Steve’s priorities and his priorities are in tune. It matters to Sam that things matter to Steve. If Barnes is of concern to Steve, still, then Sam can’t imagine not caring. He got in deep without intending to, and he knows too much about all that Barnes has lived through to see him solely as an extension of Steve. At this point, if Steve gave up searching Sam might be persuaded to do the same, but his concern would go on.

None of which is going to be said now. He leans in and kisses Steve again, and his pulse beats out a sure rhythm.

But if their interests, and their investment in each other, have aligned, it's a mutual thing. Sam takes a quick break from touching Steve to fill him in on Asha, on the note, on what happened, because he knows Steve cares. It's frustrating, but satisfying, to stop and talk about the things they need to, the stupid details that should be shared and decided now- can Asha be told she's safe? Will they be notifying anyone about the overly-intimidating lurkers? Has Steve communicated whatever he should to his FBI contact?

Some minutes later, Sam hangs up the landline, and patiently waits for Steve to finish, leaning back against the door frame and just watching the focused expression on his face. It's a good look; they're all good looks, on Steve. He snaps the laptop shut again and they're done for now, wrapping up without saying another word.

It’s a heady rush, knowing that they're so in tune. For a quick moment as Steve grabs him and spins him around, pushing him back up against the nearest flat surface, Sam feels as if he could just step off a building right now and fly without his wings. Then he can’t remember what he was thinking of, because it’s all Steve, the smell of him, the incredibly human taste of him. He’s distracted by the texture of Steve’s fingertips brushing over his not-quite-stubble, barely firm enough not to tickle, leaving him slightly breathless and oh-so-aroused.

Steve’s left hand comes up to grip his shoulder, right over the words that have taunted him for so long. Right over Steve’s words, and they flare up- like a burn without pain, something wonderful and soft instead. Never mind that Sam’s still wearing a shirt with sleeves, Steve traced over the letters anyways, and Sam never want anyone else to touch him there again.

It’s intense, and giddy. Sam laughs for the joy of it, and reaches out to drag his thumb across Steve’s collarbone. Steve actually gasps out loud, tensing up, and his gaze meets Sam’s and then there’s no more talking, or thinking.

Of all the things people say and don’t say about marks, Sam’s never really considered the way they stand as a physical representation of an internal, intangible state. The connection is fascinating. Sam wants to learn all the different ways his mark can react to Steve’s touch, to Steve- when they’re calm and happy, when they’re goofing around, when they’re sharing small, sweet kisses, when they’re having passionate, enthusiastic sex.

Sam comes back to himself to find that his shirt has ended up crumpled between their feet, while Steve Rogers is plastered up against his front. Sam’s face hurts from smiling. He slowly traces his hand down Steve’s chest- Steve’s ditched the body-armor but not his actual clothing, what a shame- and Steve full-body shudders, broad muscle twitching as Sam’s thumb barely brushes a nipple. It’s not urgent, though, just.. nice. Weirdly nice. He wants to take Steve to the bedroom, take off his clothes, and make him feel better than he’s ever felt before, but he also wants to sit and talk with him for hours, and then again he’s fine with being near Steve, no fears and no pressure. Apparently months of thwarted desire result in strange things, for Sam. In all fairness, he really should have realized that before- he’s certainly had the context.

“I always thought…” Steve mutters against Sam’s neck, and Sam reaches up to stroke his fingers through Steve’s hair. “My words. I always thought they were somehow… betraying him, like they meant I needed someone else, someone I didn’t already know, to be happy. I never- and then after everything, I couldn’t just put him in second place in-”

“Steve.” Sam feels Steve try to rise, but keeps his hand tucked around the back of his head. “They can be my words and still be about him, you know.”

“Th- oh.”

It’s hilarious, the expression of absolute bewilderment that crosses Steve’s face, and the way that slowly transitions to wonder, or even awe. It’s funny because even though he still bears the weight of the world and the burden of failing at the impossible, at least from this angle that outright guilt is starting to look preposterous.

“I’m not asking you to stop looking out for him,” Sam points out.

“I know that,” Steve says. And then he does pull away, and gives Sam that slightly sheepish look, reconsidering what he just said. “And I even believe it, now.”

Before, the admission that he hadn’t previously believed would have felt like some sort of failure, like a show of ill faith. Now it’s easier to see where the things going on in Steve’s head are actually about Steve’s issues, and when they’re about reality. The whole world comes to Sam now with the addition of Steve-understanding, and that would be creepy, except he’s pretty sure Steve’s world now includes a Sam-understanding, how Sam sees things, and that’s… nicer than he thought it would be. There have been a lot of people in Sam’s life to love, and a lot of people who’ve loved him, but this is unconditional and honest and right.

Sam’s so damn lucky.

“We taking off again soon?” Sam’s more than idly curious about Steve's plans, but right now, he just wants to know what’s happening tonight.

“Up to you,” Steve says easily. “I can’t say I haven’t found him.”

“Pretty sure he found you. Well, me, but…”

“Same thing.” Steve has that small, sweet smile when he says it, like the sentiment behind those words is enough to make him bashful.

Sam feels that thready pulse of joy course through him again. He could spend his whole life just witnessing and cataloging the many variations of Steve Rogers smile, and be content with his lot. Also, love makes him sappy. “But he came here. He knows how to find you, and he definitely knows you mean something.”

“I dont want to stop,” agrees Steve, “but I don’t know that I’ll accomplish anything more if I keep following his actions around right now. Maybe the next move is his.” It should leave Sam feeling vindicated, finally hearing Steve acknowledge the point Sam’s been making all year, but instead he’s relieved and a little sorry.

Sam privately hopes the Winter Soldier gives himself a few weeks, at least, to recover before blowing up any buildings. He stops, and reconsiders that thought- apparently he’s now the sort of person whose reaction to injured super-whatevers is to hope that they take a few weeks inbetween events of mass destruction. For their own sake.

“What do you think?” Steve asks.

“I think I could use something a little more normal, just for a little while.”

“And what does normal look like for Sam Wilson in-” he turns his head to glance at the calendar on the wall- “mid-September?”

Sam hesitates, licking his lips and stepping away to gain himself a moment of clear thought. The proximity to Steve messes with his head, desire overwhelming him and making his one-track mind worse, but this deserves his full attention.

There’s one thing, every September, that he tells himself he’s going to do, but then he somehow never has the nerve to go through with it. Still, if there was ever a year when he should, it’s this one. “I… keep thinking I should visit Riley’s grave. On- it’s almost the anniversary of his death, and I…” He breathes deliberately, but it doesn’t make his chest hurt this time. “I didn’t make it to the funeral, you know?” Sam glances up at Steve again.

“I know,” agrees Steve. “I know. You should go.”

“Yeah?” He goes for light, desperately needing an out. “I barely been home five minutes.”

“Yeah. You should.” Steve keeps his tone perfectly serious. “Except… can I come along?”

Sam’s grinning again without meaning to. He’s grinning, and he misses Riley so much in that moment. He’ll never get to introduce Riley to Steve, or Steve to Riley. He’ll never get to share this part of his life, never see what he and Riley might have been in this strange, unbelievable, unforseeable future. He’ll never see their friendship grow into something solid, something long and lasting. It’ll always be sad, but he’s got Steve, right now, and that’s worth so much. “I’d like that,” he says.

Steve reaches out and Sam gets folded in close, like he’s being wrapped up in the safety of Steve. In Steve’s love. This kiss is like cool water, the perfect thing for what it is, satisfying and rewarding. It makes Sam’s skin tingle on the inside. When he breaks away, he’s smiling again.

“We’ll get this right,” he says. “Eventually, we’ll figure this out.”

“Not right now,” Steve says, surprisingly stern. He kisses Sam again and it’s not soft, not warm- it’s hard and hot and his mouth is moving in ways that have never lit Sam up from the inside like this, but oh, it’s so worth learning now.

Steve looks right at him, intent clear, a question in his hesitation. Sam grins back. “Yeah, we’ll deal with working that out tomorrow.” Other ideas start to percolate through his brain, things he’s neglected for far too long, distracted by pain and loneliness. He’s never been further from lonely than he is right now. “Tonight let’s just be us.”

FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> So, one more thing: This fic literally would not have been posted on time, or maybe at all, if it weren't for Holdt's support, generosity, patience, and understanding. Thank you so much for everything- the art is just one part of all you've done!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Alight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2501000) by [Holdt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holdt/pseuds/Holdt)




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